


Death is Not the Only Change

by Queen_BeeChloe



Series: Wielders of the Reaper's Scythe [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Grim Reapers, Humor, Kwamis are reapers, POV Multiple, Reapers AU, Some angst, entire class has abilities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-12 18:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 31,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13553112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_BeeChloe/pseuds/Queen_BeeChloe
Summary: There was a blinding flash of light, and then everything was different.Suddenly, the whole city could see the reapers, but the changes to Miss Bustier's class were even more dramatic.Nathaniel and Rose are now visible to their classmates.Sabrina no longer is. At least not all of the time.Kim can no longer keep his embarrassing abilities to himself, no matter how hard he tries.Max's intellect has made the leap from high to this-guy-could-take-over-the-world-if-he-wanted-to, and considering how things are going, he's only mostly sure that he doesn’t want to.Alix has nightmares that just won't stop coming true.Ivan and Mylene are now closer than ever, mainly because every step they take apart puts the city in more and more danger.Chloe keeps seeing things, things she never wanted to see.Juleka keeps seeing ghosts, and she couldn't be more thrilled about that.Nino is now aware of abilities it turns out he's had for years, and they just keep getting stronger.Alya has powers that other reporters can only dream of having.Adrien can die. Over and over again.And Marinette can't die at all.





	1. The Harbingers of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marinette and Alya have a conversation about the harbingers.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng told her parents everything.

And since she'd become friends with Alya, she told her everything too. Even though Alya wasn't always quite so open herself, there wasn't anything that Alya didn't know about Marinette.

Well, except for one thing. One thing that neither her parents or Alya knew.

Marinette stuffed a croissant in her mouth as she sprinted out the door. She was running late. Again. She'd been up late last night working on a dress design, and she'd slept through her alarm this morning as a result.

Lucky for her, she could book it when she really needed to. Years of being late had resulted in Marinette actually being pretty fast, when she was motivated.

She ran all the way to school, with no moments of her famous clumsiness, except for the one where she almost ran into a pole, then dodged it by screeching and flailing wildly as she stepped around the pole, dropping the last piece of her croissant as she did. Not a great moment, but still better than she did normally.

She got to school before the bell rang, and stopped in front of the staircase, hands on her knees, panting hard.

A second later, Alya came running up to her. "Girl, did you hear the news this morning?"

Marinette looked up at her. "The news?"

"You didn't hear?" Alya's eyes were wide with shock and excitement. "About what happened at the Jagged Stone concert last night?"

Marinette shook her head.

"Seriously? A guy brought a gun to the concert. They think he was planning on shooting up the place." Alya pulled her phone out of her pocket and tapped on the screen. She turned it around so that Marinette could see the picture on it, a mugshot of a guy in his late thirties. "Anyway, this guy brought a gun to the Jagged Stone concert, but then this guy..." She pulled another photo up on her phone, this one of a guy in his twenties, and kept talking. "...told the police that the other guy was going to do something bad and they were able to stop him. Isn’t that so cool?"

Marinette smiled at her friend's enthusiasm. "That's great, that they were able to stop him. Did anyone get hurt?"

Alya shook her head, still looking like she was about to explode from excitement. "Nope. But I haven't even told you the best part of the story yet. Guess how the guy knew that something bad was going to happen and that he needed to contact the police."

Marinette's stomach twisted. She had a sinking feeling that she knew where this was going. "Ho.. how did he know?" She asked with a nervous smile. "D…did he see the gun or something?"

Alya shook her head again. "No, nothing like that." She beamed at Marinette, eyes alight with the delight of finding a great news story. "He saw reapers!"

Marinette's stomach dropped. "Oh," she said in a small voice.

Alya didn't seem to notice that Marinette was not as excited as she was. "Yeah, the guy's totally a harbinger, and he saw a bunch reapers standing next to the people around this guy, figured out that this guy was about to do something bad, and told the police! Isn't that amazing?"

Marinette nodded, feeling sick to her stomach.

Alya finally seemed to notice that was something was bothering Marinette. "Oh, come on, Marinette. Don't tell me you're one of those people who thinks that the harbingers are creepy."

"I don't," Marinette protested weakly.

"Good, cause you shouldn't," Alya said happily. "They're like superheroes! I mean, there are all these stories of them saving people's lives because they saw a reaper and knew they had to do something. I mean, sure, seeing the personification of death all the time is probably a little creepy for them, but they're so cool! Like, the way that they can tell if someone is going to die in less than a year if the reaper is more than twenty feet away from the person they're looking at, or if they're going to die in less than a day if the reaper is more than five feet away, or if they'll die within five minutes if the reaper is right next to them. It helps them save so many lives! I have to start writing a blog about them. Can you even imagine what it would be like to be able to see a grim reaper?"

Marinette saw a flash of color out of the corner of her eye and glanced sideways involuntarily.

Standing across the street from her was a figure in a long, blood red cloak, the hood pulled low over their face so that all Marinette could see was their blood red lips and their chin. The sleeves draped over the figure's hands, hiding them from view, one sleeve bunched up where the figure gripped the handle of a bronze scythe.

Even with the figure's eyes covered, it was easy to tell where it was looking.

Straight at Marinette.

It had been following her for the last week, staring at her through the windows of her house and classroom, standing across every street Marinette went down. Marinette kept trying not to look at it, but the brilliant red was hard to ignore.

Marinette tore her eyes off of the creature and looked back at Alya with a forced smile. "No. No, I can't imagine what it would be like to be able to see a reaper."

Alya frowned. “Are you okay, girl? You look like you feel kind of sick.”

Marinette shook her head and smiled weakly. “No, I'm fine.” Alya didn't look convinced. “I am. You said you wanted to write a blog about the harbingers, right? What's your first post going to be about?”

Alya's eyes lit up. “Well, actually..”

The bell cut her off. Marinette smiled apologetically at her. “Guess you'll have to tell me later.”

Alya nodded. “Yeah. After class.”

They went up the steps together. Just before they stepped inside the school, Marinette glanced over her shoulder, looking across the street. The reaper still stood motionlessly on the other side, and even though Marinette knew it was impossible, it almost looked like the reaper was smiling.


	2. The Heralds of Salvation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alya finds out about the heralds

Alya Cesaire's middle name was not Thorough.

But it should have been.

When Alya did something, she didn't do it halfway. Recklessly, sometimes. Based off bad information or haphazard guesses, occasionally. But halfway?

Never.

So naturally, Alya couldn't just sit in class, paying attention to the teacher and waiting patiently to talk to Marinette about what she'd learned about harbingers.

No, she spent the class- the entire school day, actually- absorbed by her phone, combing the internet for everything she could find about harbingers; what they thought about reapers, what other people thought about them, famous cases in which a harbinger had played a key role. Anything she could get her hands on about harbingers, she read.

And that was how she found out about the heralds.

She'd been reading a study done by this guy who had rounded up a bunch of people who claimed to be harbingers, an experiment had been considered the first substantial, scientific proof that both harbingers and reapers did exist.

Then the guy had run into someone who claimed to see people who weren't there, people with supernatural abilities. Then he found more people who claimed to also see invisible people. One of them referred to them as angels. And he'd decided to run a similar experiment with them as he'd run with the harbingers.

Once he had made some tweaks to the experiment, he found that these people agreed on whether one of these angels were or weren't there, the same way the harbingers had agreed on the reapers.

Not only that, but when asked to describe the angels, their descriptions had all matched, without any idea of what the others had said.

This had prompted the guy to do a bunch of other experiments, both about harbingers and the heralds, as one of them had claimed they were called by the angels.

His work was interesting, to say the least. But he'd never been able to prove that there was a connection between reapers and these angels, though he'd never stopped believing it was true.

"Alya?" Marinette's voice, though quiet and somewhat hesitant, cut through Alya's distraction, snapping her back to the moment.

The bell must have rang, because the rest of the class had already packed up and started to file out the door.

Alya looked at Marinette's concerned face and frowned. "Hey, have you ever heard of a herald before?"

Marinette blinked, looking taken aback by the question. "Uh... Aren't they the people that go in front of kings and stuff? Announcing their presence?"

Alya shook her head. "Not that kind of the herald. Another kind. They see people that other people can't see."

Marinette looked confused. "But..."

Another voice cut her off, a snobby, unpleasant voice that Alya literally never wanted to hear. "Hey, airhead."

Alya turned her head to look, or rather glare, at Chloe. Beside her, Marinette pouted angrily, her normal reaction to Chloe feeling the need to talk to them.

Chloe looked at Alya smugly. "You know what the actual word for people who see things that aren't there is? Schizophrenia." She spoke with absolute confidence. Then she looked at Sabrina. "It is schizophrenia, right?" She looked back at them and kept talking, not giving Sabrina a chance to respond. "Whatever. Some kind of insanity."

Alya folded her arms across her chest. "Why is that so hard to believe? Reapers exist. Why can't other things exist too? I mean, if harbingers can..."

"Don't tell me you believe in that nonsense," Chloe scoffed. "Reapers? Harbingers? As if."

Alya looked at Marinette. Marinette looked back at her, her expression mirroring Alya's feelings of disbelief exactly.

Alya looked back at Chloe. "You don't believe in harbingers? Seriously? What about last night, when a harbinger stopped that shooting?"

Chloe snorted. "Obviously, he was in on it the whole time. Really, Alya, what kind of a reporter are you going to be if you're going to be so gullible all the time?"

Alya matched her smirk with one of her own. "Okay, Chloe. But if reapers aren't real and harbingers can't see them, then how could so many people run tests and all find that harbingers can tell sick people and healthy people apart from seeing if they have a reaper or not? How did so many different people just happen to all fake those results?"

Marinette ducked her head, shoving her stuff into her school bag and acting like she couldn't hear Alya. Chloe glared at her but didn't respond.

Alya kept going. "And how is that so many different heralds can look in the same room at different times, without any idea of what the others have said, and all agree on whether or not an invisible person is there? And then, if a person is there, how are they able to describe this person, thier shoes and clothes and hair and eyes and have their descriptions all match? Last time I checked, people don't share hallucinations."

Chloe's eyes widened slightly. For a moment she stood so still it was like she wasn't even breathing. Then she shook her head slightly. "I don't know how they did that, but seeing people who aren't there is impossible. There are no such things as guardian angels or..." She stopped, sucking in a sharp breath. "Whatever. If you weirdos want to believe in crazy, impossible, idiotic things, than that's on you."

Marinette huffed angrily. "Seriously, Chloe? What's the matter with you?"

Chloe flashed a superior smile at her. "Nothing. Don't be jealous just because I'm flawless and you're..." She paused, looking at Marinette like she was trying to think of a word bad enough for her. "You."

Beside her, Sabrina snickered.

Alya wasn't impressed. Still, this was the moment when Alya would normally stick up for Marinette, despite the fact that Marinette was perfectly capable of sticking up for herself.

But this time she didn't, because her mind was still focused on something else that Chloe had said. "Why did you call them guardian angels? That’s a random thing to call them, don’t you think?"

"Whatever." Chloe turned away, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "Come on, Sabrina. Let's get any from them before we catch their weirdness."

She stalked out of the room, Sabrina trailing after her obediently.

Alya glanced over at Marinette with a smile. "Honestly, I think Chloe would be a lot more bearable if she was more weird and less Chloe."

Marinette smiled back at her weakly. "Yeah."

Something was definitely bothering her. Alya knew her more than well enough to know that.

But she could also tell that Marinette didn't want to talk about it. And Marinette was usually so open. If she had something she didn't want to share, even the reporter in Alya couldn't help but to respect that.

Plus, she really wanted to share with Marinette what else she'd learned.

So she let the weak smile go and talked about something else, stuffing books into her bag as she did. "You know what? Forget about the heralds. You will not believe some of the stuff people found out, researching the reapers."

Marinette glanced away from her, towards the window. "I'm sure I'll believe what they found, researching reapers. I just can't believe someone would want to."

She was spacing out now, lost in some train of thought Alya couldn't follow.

Alya didn't dwell on it. She zipped her bag closed and shouldered it. Then she grabbed Marinette's hand and headed for the door.

Marinette yelped as Alya started to move, dragging Marinette with her.

Alya laughed. "Come on. Let's go to your place. I have so much I want to tell you about the reapers! I'm willing to bet that you couldn't have guessed half of it."

Marinette didn't respond.

They headed out the front door and started toward the Dupain-Cheng bakery, passing Chloe as they did.

She was about to get into her car, but she glanced up at them as they passed her.

She scowled at Alya when their eyes met, but there was something besides anger in her expression.

If Alya hadn't known better, she almost would have thought it was fear.

Almost.


	3. The Guardians

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe finds out she might not be crazy after all

Chloe Bourgeois did not believe in things she couldn't see.

If she was being completely honest, she didn't believe in all the things she could see, either.

Like that outfit Mylene was wearing. Did she really think that outfit was a good idea? Had she been dropped on the head when she was younger, or was she born that stupid?

Chloe was about to say something to that effect, but right as she was opening her mouth to let Mylene know just how bad of a choice that shirt had been, she happened to meet Alya's eyes.

And the words died on her lips. 

Alya's words from yesterday rang through her mind: "Last time I checked, people don't share hallucinations."

Chloe looked down at her desk. Those words had kept her up all night, questions running through her mind. Was Alya right? Could harbingers and heralds really exist?

She turned in her seat, her eyes going to the back of the classroom.

It had taken her months to realize that no one sat in the seat next to Juleka, to realize that Juleka wasn't too quiet to talk to Rose, she just couldn't see her. That though Rose talked to her classmates as if they could hear her, they couldn't.

It had taken her years to realize that no one sat behind Ivan. That the red haired artist who never spoke to anyone and who no one ever spoke to (except occasionally Rose) was invisible to everyone but her.

So Chloe had stuck them on the list of people she could see but no one else could. The people who weren't real.

Only now, she was wondering if they belonged on a different list: the guardian angels. The people she could see because she was a herald.

That's what Alya had called people like her. And that wasn't the first time Chloe had heard that word applied to her.

Chloe turned back around in her seat. She had realized when she was little that she sometimes saw people that weren't there. She had decided then she wouldn't be crazy, and she had paid the hallucinations no attention and no thought ever since. She wasn't going to start now. She wasn't going to look up the study Alya had talked about. She wasn't going to waste another second thinking about guardian angels or heralds.

The rest of the day, Chloe focused on forcing herself to act like herself. She insulted Mylene until Mylene ran out of the room crying. She bossed Kim around. She got into a fight with Marinette that was bad enough, they both nearly got sent to the principal's office.

All in all, Chloe was proud of herself for her day's work.

Maybe too proud, because she wasn't watching where she was going. She was chatting happily with Sabrina, when she saw someone out of the corner of her eye. Normally, she would have just walked into them. She never stepped around people, since she never wanted to dodge someone who want really there.

But she was distracted, and she stepped around the person without even thinking about it.

Only a second too late did she recognize the red hair, and realize she'd just stepped around Nathaniel.

Chloe flinched and snapped her head forward, going so abruptly silent that Sabrina gave her a curious look.

"What?" A startled voice behind her said. She'd never heard the voice before, but she knew who it was anyway.

Nathaniel.

"Hang on a second," he continued. "Chloe, can you... Can you see me?"

Chloe sucked in a sharp breath. He was just a hallucination. Where did he get off, acting so human? Acting exactly the way a real person would react if they were invisible to most people and suddenly discorvered someone who they thought couldn't see them really could? She wanted to tell him off for behaving so human, but that would be counterproductive.

"Chloe? Are you okay?" Sabrina asked, her voice quiet.

Behind her, Nathaniel raised his voice. "Rose? Did you know Chloe could see us?"

"What?" Rose left Juleka's side for once, running over to Nathaniel. "You mean she's a herald?"

Chloe forced a smile at Sabrina. "I'm fine. Let's just go home." They started walking toward the front of the school.

"Hang on! Chloe!" Rose sounded panicked. "You can't go by yourself. If any of the akumas saw you do that they're going to be after you! It's not safe for you to be by yourself."

"Speaking of which," Nathaniel said. "Marinette's leaving, so I need to go. She's already got a reaper following her. If an akuma goes after her..."  
He didn't finish the sentence.

Rose came running up beside her. "Look, Chloe, you can pretend you don't see me if you want to, but I can't let you go home alone now."

Chloe looked at Sabrina. "Hey, Sabrina, I think I'll just go home alone today. I'm not really in the mood to put up with anyone today. For any reason."

Sabrina blinked in surprise. "Were we supposed to go home together today? I... Didn't know that. But um, I'll just head home."

Rose was frowning. Chloe could hear it in her voice. "Chloe, you really shouldn't be alone..."

Chloe ignored her and climbed into the limo. She took a deep breath. It's not real, she reminded herself. It's not real.

She didn't see any sign of Rose on the way home, or when she got back to her daddy's hotel.

She didn't see any sign of her until late that night, when she walked into her bedroom and found Rose and Nathaniel waiting for her.

She stopped dead in her tracks as the door closed behind her.

"There's no point in pretending you can't see us, Chloe," Rose said, her voice quiet and gentle. "No one's around to think you're insane. You can talk to us."

Chloe clenched her hands into fists. Her jaw tightened but she didn't say anything.

Nathaniel tilted his head. "I don't think she wants to speak to us."

Rose frowned. "What? Why not?"

Nathaniel studied Chloe for a moment. Then he took a step toward her, his voice full of sympathy. "You're not crazy, Chloe."

Chloe looked at him, meeting his gaze with a murderous glare. He made a squeaking sound and froze. "What are you? Some kind of imaginary friend? Because I know you're not real."

"He's as real as I am."

Chloe whirled at the sound of the voice. She stared at the person behind her, a boy with blond hair and green eyes, dressed all in white with a sword at his hip.

"Adrien," Chloe gasped like she couldn't get enough air in her lungs. She couldn't believe he was here. The one hallucination she'd never been able to ignore.

Her best friend.

Adrien smiled sadly. "It's been years since I've seen you, Chloe. You've changed so much."

Chloe swallowed hard. "Why are you here? After all this time?"

Adrien's expression grew deadly serious. "Because something terrible is going to happen to your class tomorrow, Chloe. And we need your help to stop it."


	4. The Reapers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nino finds out that Chloe might be totally insane (among other things).

Nino Lahiffe was eight years old when he met his first harbinger and he knew he never wanted to meet another one.

He'd run out his front door because he was upset about... Something. He couldn't even remember what anymore.

He'd gotten to a street corner and seen the walk signal flashing, and he'd run out onto the street.

At the same time, a man met his eyes across the street. He'd looked away from Nino, at something behind him, and he'd broken into a dead sprint.

A car came screeching around the corner, too fast to stop. No one could get to Nino in time.

Except, of course, the guy who was already running.

He slammed into Nino, pushing him out of the way, before leaping out of the way himself.

He didn't quite make it.

He'd survived, but the same could not be said about his legs.

And it was all because of Nino.

Nino had seen the news report later. Had seen the man who saved his life walking on two fake legs because of him. Had seen how people reacted to him being a harbinger, and knew that no matter how many times he saved someone, some people would never stop being scared of him.

And Nino had known from that second that he never wanted to meet another harbinger. He couldn't even stand to talk about them. 

Nino tried not to shiver when Alya talked about starting a blog on the harbingers, but it was hard to suppress a seven year old habit.

Especially when she told him she wanted to interview a harbinger, and asked him if he would record it for her.

He forced a smile and said yes, trying to seem chill. Alya didn't seem to notice anything off, but Nino had no idea if he'd really be able to go through with it.

Of course, she hadn't found a harbinger who would talk to her yet, so at least he still had a little time before he had to deal with it.

Nino leaned his head back in his chair. He had his headphones turned up almost as high as they would go. He'd discovered years ago that the louder the music, the better he thought, but today it didn't seem to be helping.

Then Chloe came in, and he forgot all about it.

Because Chloe was acting weird.

Not mean weird. Weird weird.

First she stood in front of the class, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. Like she had something to say, but absolutely no idea how to say it.

That was weird enough. Chloe, with nothing to say? Nino felt like he'd just stepped into an alternate universe.

But then she went and sat down, and things got even weirder.

For one thing, she kept staring at empty chairs, the one behind Ivan and the one next to Juleka, making weird faces at said empty chairs and mouthing things at them.

The entire class stared at her like she was insane, and eventually, Chloe noticed.

She glared at all of them. "What's the matter with you? Didn't your parents ever teach you it's rude to stare at people who are having slight nervous breakdowns in public?"

Nino couldn't tell if she was kidding about the nervous breakdown part. 

Either way, the entire class took thier eyes off Chloe, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

Chloe kept sneaking glances at the empty chairs. The rest of the class pretended not to notice.

Ms. Bustier walked into the classroom. She had just started to talk when Marinette burst into the classroom.

Marinette was panting hard, obviously having sprinted to the school.

"I'm sor..." She started to say, but then she looked up.

Instantly, she froze, her eyes going wide as saucers. Her jaw dropped, her eyes scanning the room madly.

Ms. Bustier frowned disapprovingly. "Marinette, if you would please take yo..."

Marinette cut her off with a blood curdling scream. "No! No! No! NO!"

"Marinette!" Alya stood up in her seat, pushing her chair over. "Are you alright?"

Marinette met her eyes and calmed down a little. She took a deep, though shaky breath. "No," she said, her voice quieter now but still panicked. "We need to get out of the classroom. Now."

For a second, the entire class just stared at her in shock. None of them seemed to know what to make of her words. 

None of them except Nino. Because he could see something in her eyes. Something he'd seen before, in another set of eyes. The haunted look of someone who'd seen death a thousand times.

Nino had never wanted to meet another harbinger. He'd never wanted to see someone else get hurt.

But this was Marinette, and if she was a harbinger, she probably already felt alone. And Nino couldn't stand that.

He stood up. "I think we should go."

Everyone stared at the two of them in shock. 

"Marinette! Nino!" Ms. Bustier didn't seem to know quite what to do with herself. "What is all this about?"

Marinette opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She seemed at a loss for words.

Nino took a deep breath and met Marinette's eyes. "You're a harbinger, right?" Everyone's eyes snapped to him with lightning speed. Nino ignored them, staying focused on Marinette. "You can see reapers in the room. That's why you want us to leave."

Marinette nodded mutely.

Ms. Bustier looked almost too stunned to move. "What? But..."

"Oh, come on!" Everyone turned in surprise at the sound of Sabrina's voice. She glared at Marinette. "She's obviously just making this up for attention. Right, Chloe?"

Chloe rolled her eyes. "Oh, just shut up, Sabrina." She glanced over, looking Marinette up and down with a scowl. Then she looked at Ms. Bustier. "Yeah, there's like a ninety-none percent chance she's lying. But that means there's a one percent chance she's not lying, and some of us are going to die. Is that a chance you want to take?"

Ms. Bustier blinked several times at Chloe. Then she looked at Marinette. "You see more than one reaper?"

Marinette swallowed and nodded. "One for each of us. And two extra, for some reason."

Ms. Bustier's expression turned to pure steel. "Everyone outside the school. Now."

Everyone was out of their seats in a heartbeat, filing quickly out of the room.

They reached the stairs when Alya turned her head to frown at Chloe. "Why did you back Marinette up like that?"

Chloe smirked. "What, like I'm not going to jump on a chance to get out of class?" She started down the stairs. "Besides, if she's lying she'll be in way more trouble now, and if she's not lying, she's totally a freak. It's a win-win situation if you ask me."

Alya stopped walking. Nino grabbed her arm and hauled her down the stairs. "What are you thinking?" He asked, his voice full of panic.

Alya frowned, her eyes distant. "I'm thinking I know how Chloe knew to call them guardian angels without being told."

"What?" Nino gave Alya a startled glance as he pulled her down the stairs. She wasn't making any sense.

They ran out of the building with the rest of the class. Marinette glanced around, frowning. "There are still reapers," she started to say.

Then her eyes trailed back to the building. Her expression hardened, and suddenly Marinette was running back into the school building. 

"Marinette!" Ms. Bustier called out. "Where are you...?"

Chloe lunged forward out of nowhere, cutting her off with a blood curdling scream of her own.

"Adrien!"


	5. The Blinding Light: Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien gets caught in the blinding light.

Adrien Agreste was one of the best trained Guardians in the city, and he should be. He'd been training since he was a toddler.

He'd known Chloe just as long, which was why his commanding officer, Nathalie, the lieutenant general directly under his father, didn't see the need to assign a specific Guardian to protect her, the way harbingers and heralds normally had. Adrien was close enough to her that if she were ever in danger, he would know.

And that was honestly the most exciting assignment he'd ever gotten: protect Chloe if she were ever in danger. His other assignments were all patrolling places that were the least likely places in Paris to be attacked by akumas, or helping younger Guardians to train, which was almost as boring as patrolling safe places.

But this time was different. This time, Adrien knew he couldn't allow Nathalie to stick him on the sidelines.

A major attack was coming for Paris, and they needed every trained Guardian to fight. And Adrien was one of the best. They couldn't keep pretending like he was an untrained child.

So he steeled his nerve and walked into his father's office.

General Gabriel Agreste had not become the best Guardian in the city by being the best fighter- that was a man who had disappeared years earlier- or the best tactician- that was Nathalie- or the most likely to do the unexpected- that title had recently been usurped by one Rose Lavillant.

No, Gabriel Agreste had become the most important Guardian in the city by his perfect, cold reserve, never touched by any emotion, except occasionally disappointment.

Adrien entered the room, and Gabriel looked up, his eyes full of that emotion.

Adrien flinched but forced himself to meet his father's eyes.

"I don't remember sending for you, Adrien," Gabriel said.

Adrien clenched his hands into fists. "Father, I don't want to be disrespectful, but you need me in this fight. You can't just bench me..."

Gabriel gave him a stern look, and Adrien stopped talking. "When, exactly, did I say I was going to bench you?"

Adrien blinked. That was not the response he had been expecting. "I... You said you wanted me to keep an eye on Chloe. I should be in the fight! We know there's going to be a massive akuma attack..."

Gabriel turned away from him. "A series of attacks, one of which seems like it will center at the school Chloe attends. On her very classroom. You need to get the students out of that room before the attack happens. The most massive attack we've ever seen, and they're focusing it a large part of it on children." He paused. "Four of the people in this class have abilities. A herald, a harbinger, an empath, and something even rarer. We cannot allow them to be killed." He turned back to look at Adrien. "I'm counting on you to protect them."

Adrien stared at his father in shock. "I... I will."

His father nodded, and Adrien knew he was dismissed.

He walked back to the door, but his father's voice stopped him. "Adrien."

Adrien turned and met his father's eyes.

"Be careful."

 

Adrien had warned Chloe to get her classmates out of the building, and she had done it.

He stood outside the building, watching for any stray akumas as he waited for them to come outside.

But something was wrong. The reapers were still by the students. Not just the students. Reapers stood by Rose and Nathanael as well. He didn't have one, but that didn't mean anything. As near as Adrien could figure, he had the laziest reaper in existence assigned to him.

On the one hand, the reapers being here meant getting them out of the building hadn't gotten them out of danger.

On the other hand, even if he couldn't save them, the reapers being there meant that the akumas still wouldn't win.

But Adrien didn't want the reapers to keep their souls away from the akumas. He wanted to keep them alive. He wanted to make sure the akumas didn't kill them. That was his job.

He braced himself for whatever was going to happen.

But then one of the reapers started acting in a way he was definitely not expecting.

A red reaper, the one standing by the black-haired harbinger- what was her name? Michelle? Marinette?- suddenly turned her head toward him. He started in surprise. The reapers almost never acknowledged the Guardians.

Then she did something even more surprising. She turned to the harbinger beside her and raised her free hand in what was clearly a stay gesture.

Adrien was stunned. The girl looked even more stunned at the reapers behavior.

Then the reaper turned and ran back into the school.

The harbinger did not stay. She broke into a run, going after the reaper.

Nathanael, the Guardian assigned to protect the harbinger, started with surprise. "Marinette!" He yelled. "What are you..?"

Adrien broke into a run, brushing past Nathanael. "I've got her," he said as he ran toward the school.

He heard Chloe scream his name, but he didn't stop.

Adrien pushed open the door to the school to see Marinette running up the stairs to the classroom, which was the worst place for her to be.

She was surprisingly fast.

Adrien didn't bother running up the stairs. Instead he leaped, straight from the ground to the second floor.

Marinette ran into her classroom, with Adrien right on her heels.

The red reaper turned as they entered the room. She waved at them to get back, but it was already too late.

The floor turned black, and akumas poured out of it.

Adrien had never even heard of so many in one place.

Which was a problem, because harbingers couldn't see akumas any more than they could see Guardians. Marinette didn't even know she was in danger.

Adrien lunged forward, throwing himself into Marinette and pulling her out of the way.

She yelped, most likely because she had no idea why she was moving, but Adrien had bigger things to deal with than her surprise and fear.

Like trying to keep her alive.

He stood in front of her and drew his sword, waiting for the akumas to swarm.

But the akumas didn't swarm.

They changed.

One moment, the room was full of dark butterflies.

The next, it was full of people and monsters. They stayed back, obviously not wanting to get too close to the reaper.

But that didn't stop them from throwing weapons, weapons they created out of nothing.

Adrien deflected the weapons as fast as they came, keeping them away from Marinette.

He heard Marinette yelp when he knocked a weapon away. He didn't know what she saw, but she clearly saw something.

As he knocked the weapons away, he saw the reaper, standing still and impassive. Weapons flew into her and disappeared into nothingness.

What was she doing? Why had she come back in here?

Adrien was tempted to ask her, but reapers never spoke. He'd heard rumors that anyone who heard their voice would die, even a Guardian.

Then one of the akumas moved toward the door. 

Adrien knew he couldn't let it leave. They had come here for a reason, looking for one of the kids in the class, and Adrien couldn't let them get to them.

But before he even had a chance to move, the reaper was already in motion, moving with incredible speed to get between the akuma and the door. The akuma backed away, not daring to get close to the reaper.

Adrien was so surprised, he almost didn't manage to block the next weapon.

The reaper was protecting the class.

But reapers didn't protect the living. Sure, they made sure that the souls of the dead could pass on without being harvested by an akuma, but keeping people alive was strictly the role of a Guardian.

Only, this reaper didn't seem to be with the program. Neither did the akumas, for that matter.

An akuma charged Adrien. He jabbed at them with his sword, but they dodged him and kept coming, forcing him away from Marinette.

He thought it was so that they could attack Marinette.

It wasn't until he felt something stab him through the back that he realized they had done it so they could kill him.

All that training, but in the end, there were just too many of them.

The last thing he was aware of before the pain and darkness took over was the reaper's head turning toward him, her lips pressing together in a thin line.

 

The next thing he was aware of was a flash of blinding light.


	6. The Blinding Light: Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marinette gets caught in the blinding light.

The red reaper who had been following Marinette lately turned her head to stare at thin air for a moment.

Marinette took her eyes of the reaper and glanced around at the others. They were all still there, all standing close to her classmates. There was an extra reaper by her, and another extra by Juleka. Marinette didn't know what that was about.

But she didn't have time to dwell on it. "There are still reapers..." She started to say.

Then the red reaper looked back at Marinette, and motioned for her to stay.

And Marinette's brain immediately short-circuited.

What?

What?

What?

Since when did reapers do that?

The reaper turned and went back inside the school building.

Which must mean there was someone in there, still about to die.

Marinette didn't want to go inside, but if someone was in trouble...

She had to try and help them.

So Marinette ran inside after the reaper.

She heard Chloe scream something, but she didn't pay attention to what Chloe was saying, too busy running after the reaper.

She followed her up into the classroom.

The reaper turned, waved for her to go back.

And then the floor turned black.

Marinette had no idea what was happening, but she could feel that she was in danger.

Then suddenly, she felt something grab her, and she was moving.

She yelped in surprise and the pressure disappeared. Marinette stumbled and fell.

And then weapons started appearing out of nowhere, flying toward her our of thin air.

But none of them touched her. They all suddenly changed directions just a couple feet away from her.

Marinette stared at the reaper. How was she doing that?

The reaper moved suddenly, planting herself in front of the door.

And something clicked in Marinette's mind.

She didn't know exactly what, but something besides the reaper was in this room. Something, or maybe somethings.

Weapons kept flying at Marinette, but then they shifted, moving away from her.

A sword stabbed randomly into the air, freezing like it was stuck inside of someone.

The reaper's head turned, her lips pressing together.

More weapons flew at Marinette.

The reaper was in motion immediately, moving in between her and the weapons. She twirled her scythe in a circle, knocking the weapons away.

Marinette squeaked in surprise. "What? You're protecting me? But reapers... They kill people."

The reaper glanced back at Marinette. She reached up with her free hand, grabbing her cloak where it it was fastened around her throat and pulled it free. Then she spoke. "We are not what you think."

Her voice was not what Marinette would have expected, high and soft and sweet. And her words were incredibly accurate.

Because when the cloak fell away, the reaper releasing the scythe so it could come off her shoulders, the scythe stayed in the air, floating freely.

Just like the reaper.

She floated in the air, her feet nowhere near the floor, because though her head floated six feet ablove the ground, she was roughly the size of an eight year old.

She was wearing a red leotard, decorated with a few large spots. It stopped at her knees and her elbows. A short skirt-like garment flared out around her hips, made out of stiffer material than her spandax, but it couldn't actually be a skirt because those went all the way around, and this one was just in the back.

Her hair was just as bloodred as her lips and her outfit, tied up in two pigtails, with red ribbons so long it reached past her hips.

Marinette stared at her. "What... What are?"

The girl held out her hand, the bronze scythe floating into her hand. It changed as it touched her hand. The metal turned red, the scythe's blade extending backwards, the blunt end of the scythe transforming into a similar double sided scythe as the top. It shrunk, changing sizes until it was no taller than she was.

The girl twirled the scythe again, knocking more weapons away from them both.

Then she glanced at Marinette again, meeting her eyes. The reaper's eyes were thousands of years old, full of centuries of wisdom and knowledge and pain and loss. And suddenly, she didn't look like a little girl to Marinette anymore. She looked exactly like the incarnation of death itself.

She turned her gaze forward again. "I'm a reaper. My name is Tikki, and I an not going to let anyone else die here today."

Marinette's jaw dropped. "Anyone else..." She started to say.

But then movement caught her eye. She turned her head, and saw a black robed figure walking through the wall. A reaper, dressed in black.

Weapons moved towards Tikki, and she curled into a ball, flipping through the air and landing on the ground, swinging her scythe in a wild arc. She didn't seem to have noticed the other reaper.

More weapons came toward Marinette. Tikki turned to protect her, but she didn't have to. A black scythe almost exactly like hers flew in, slicing through the weapons.

Tikki's blue eyes snapped to the black reaper. Her eyes widened. A weapon flew into her and disappeared into nothingness. Tikki didn't even seem to notice. "Plagg," she whispered, her voice full of a thousand emotions.

The black reaper held out his hand, and the black scythe flew back to him. Then he looked at Tikki. "You said you didn't want to lose anyone else. Let's not lose anyone at all."

He walked past Marinette, and knelt down on the floor.

"Plagg," Tikki said, releasing her scythe. It flew into the air, slicing through weapons, protecting both her and Marinette. "Plagg, the light is coming."

"Yeah," Plagg agreed, turning toward her, black lips curving in a sad smile. "That would be the idea." He glanced toward Marinette. "I've got him. You get her."

Tikki stared at Plagg a moment longer.

Then the room started to glow.

Tikki shot forward, slamming into Marinette at the same time as a blinding light washed over her.

She found herself flying through the air as Tikki's arms wrapped around her.

She flew through a wall, as Tikki disappeared and a red light, and a red robe wrapped around Marinette, a red scythe suddenly appearing in her hand.

She found herself flying into the air, and then suddenly, she stopped, floating in midair, her robe floating around her, surrounded by light.

She watched the light, washing over her classmates. They screamed and fell to the ground. The light kept moving, washing over the city.

Marinette didn't know how she knew it, but she knew she had to stop the light, or it would destroy the city.

She raised Tikki's- her?- scythe, and suddenly the light started flowing toward her, like it was being sucked into her.

Marinette felt like she was going to explode, but she kept her scythe raised. Light raced up it, shooting up into the sky, going up instead of out.

Finally the light was gone, but Marinette was exhausted.

She started to drop, falling out of the sky, when she saw a figure in a black robe emerge from the building, leaping out of the hole.

He landed on the ground, Marinette slowly losing consciousness in his arms. She couldn't see his face, couldn't make out anything but the faint glow of green eyes under his hood.

He collapsed, like he didn't have any more strength than she did.

And then everything went black.


	7. The Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel contemplates his next move.

Gabriel Agreste was both angry and delighted, all at once.

Not that he let either of those emotions show.

People tended to think he had no emotions, which was simply not true. What he had was control. What he had was a plan.

And while his plan had technically worked, he found himself dealing with some unexpected consequences that he was not thrilled to find himself with.

Hence the anger.

Gabriel pushed himself to his feet. "Thank you for your report, Nathalie," he said with forced calm.

Nathalie nodded, her expression betraying nothing, the only person in the city who could give him a run for his money in terms of control. She turned and walked out the door, leaving Gabriel alone in his office.

Gabriel began to pace around the room, something he would never do in front of her, trying to figure out exactly how his plan had gone wrong.

Most people suffered under a misconception about the reapers. The pathetic humans they guarded actually thought that reapers killed people, that they were death incarnate.

The Guardians thought they were smarter, because they knew that reapers were simply invoked whenever someone was in danger of dying, though how they knew that every time was a little unclear. They did it for both humans and Guardians, though Guardians were much harder to kill. They kept the souls pure and safe, allowing them to pass on without being harvested by the demons.

The akumas.

But Gabriel knew that they were even more than that. He knew that the reapers were present more than anyone thought, that they were only visible to Guardians and harbingers when they were guarding one particular human or Guardian, but they were there constantly. Protecting the borders of the human world from the world of monsters and akumas.

Reapers were the ultimate power in the world, the ultimate protectors, and that was unfortunate, because his goals were very much at odds with theirs.

It had taken him years to figure out how to open gateways, to let the akumas through. And then once he figured that out, it had taken him weeks to find places where the barrier was weak enough that the reapers couldn't stop him from doing it.

He'd discovered that the pathetic humans he pretended to guard were the answer. Humans with powers created weaknesses in the barrier, and seemed to have unexpected effects on the reapers as well.

So the classroom containing four students with strong, unusual powers became the place for the biggest gateway, but there were others.

One in a bakery with a woman who didn't either didn't know about her powers, or didn't let on that she did.

Another in a boat in the river. Another in a hotel room where some rock star was staying for a few days. Another in the home of a news reporter. Another on a bus carrying a mime to a rehearsal.

The gateways had opened fine, unleashing the akumas, who had done their job, distracting the reapers so that a more powerful attack could come through.

But then everything had gone wrong.

Gabriel paused his pacing, thinking about Nathalie's report.

The red reaper, the more important of his two primary targets, had behaved exactly as predicted, going into the classroom to deal with the akumas herself.

The harbinger had gone in after her, which wasn't part of the plan, but wouldn't have messed it up too much if her assigned Guardian had gone in after her, protected her like he was supposed to.

But he hadn't. Adrien had.

And Gabriel didn't even know what had happened to Adrien in there, because neither Nathaniel or Rose had had the sense to follow him in. As a result, all Gabriel knew was that after everything had happened, Adrien and the harbinger had been found unconscious with the rest of the class.

He really shouldn't be surprised about that. Rose and Nathaniel had both started out being trained to be on his own personal force. They were both powerful enough for it.

But Rose had kept going AWOL. Because she had smelled cookies baking. Because she saw a pretty flower. She was never at her post, so he had assigned her to watch the herald's class. There were a few Guardians assigned to watch the school already, but he figured with four people, the class could use their own personal Guardian.

Then a couple of years later, Nathaniel had flunked out as well. He flinched when people talked to him, and he never paid attention. He ran or hid when too many people focused on him.

So Gabriel had reassigned him to guard the harbinger.

But he hadn't gone in, so instead of a quiet, unobtrusive artist being in the building to fight the akumas, Adrien had been in there.

And things had only gotten worse from there.

The entire plan had been a trap. A setup, to catch the red reaper. Gabriel had known that he'd have to set up a different trap to catch the black reaper, because no one even knew where the black reaper was. He had a tendency to stay hidden, to stay in the shadows, and Gabriel had been sure he'd have to use the red reaper to lure him out.

But he'd shown up, right before the attack started.

And then, when the red reaper had somehow inexplicably changed herself and redirected the light, saving the city, the black reaper had destroyed the akumas inside the building, so Gabriel really had no way of knowing what had gone down.

So the plan had fulfilled its main purpose. It had lured not only the red reaper, but also the black reaper out.

But on the other hand, the entire city of Paris had not been converted into akumas, so Gabriel did not have the massive akuma army he'd planned on using to capture the reapers, and the majority of the akumas who had come through before the light had been destroyed, either by a Guardian or by the black reaper, who had felt the need to do a Guardian's job, for some reason.

Gabriel paused his pacing for a moment. 

There really was nothing else he could do.

He walked over to the prtrait hanging on the wall and pushed it aside, revealing a staircase.

He walked down the stairs to a large undergound room. It went down several stories, and Gabriel was only on the first one.

Most of the first story had no floor, only open space to the stories below it. There was a narrow pathway down the middle that cut through to the center of the room, where a circular platform was. And there was a walkway that want around the very edges of the room, leading past several alcoves. The rest of the space was open, so that he could see down to the lowest floor. It was too dark to see what was down there, but he already knew.

Gabriel walked on the center walkway, out to the platform.

A figure knelt on the center of the platform, a figure shrouded in a light purple cloak. Chains made of light went up the cloaks sleeves to wrap around the figures wrists. More chains wrapped around the figure's ankles, all four chains stretched taut so that the figure couldn't move.

Gabriel bent over the figure and pulled the hood off his head, revealing the face of what looked to be a boy of about six, with light purple eyes and lips, and darker purple hair.

The boy kept his head bent low, his eyes downcast.

Gabriel looked down at him. "Alright, Nooroo. I'm going to need your help again."

Nooroo lifted his head to look at Gabriel with tired eyes. "Yes, Master," he said, his voice weak.

Gabriel smiled.


	8. For the City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Master Fu contemplates his next move.

 

Master Fu watched as the red and black reapers lost consciousness and changed back. Tikki and Plagg reformed beside them, hovering worriedly over their new partners. 

 

Master Fu turned his head to look at the green reaper standing patiently beside him. "Get them out of here, Wayzz. If the Guardians show up and there are still reapers here, they might figure out what happened." 

 

The reaper nodded and left Master Fu's side, going over to Tikki and Plagg. He talked to them for a moment, and then all three of them disappeared. 

 

Even after they were gone, Master Fu still stuck around, watching as other Guardians showed up, too late to find out what had happened. They collected Adrien, Nathaniel, and Rose, and disappeared. 

 

Wayzz reappeared beside Master Fu. 

 

Master Fu smiled at him. "Adrien Agreste is now human," he said. "And I don't believe that the Guardians who collected him realized that. Gabriel Agreste is not going to be happy when he finds out." He chuckled imagining the other man's reaction. Even after everything, Gabriel still believed he could control the whole world. He was in for a rude awakening. 

 

Wayzz pulled the hood off of his head to look at Master Fu, revealing the face of a seven-year old boy, with light green hair and lips, and darker green irises, surrounded by yellow instead of white. "Are you sure you don't want to go see the Guardians, Master?" 

   
Master Fu shook his head. "No, the only way this many attacks could have happened at once was if they figured out that humans with abilities were the way to open more portals, and the only one who could have figured that out is a Guardian. Until we know who is behind this, the Guardians cannot know about any of the things we have learned since we last saw them." 

 

Wayzz nodded. "Yes, Master." 

 

Master Fu glanced at him. "Where did you send Tikki and Plagg?" 

 

Wayzz waved his non-scythe wielding hand at the harbinger. "I sent Tikki to Marinette's house. Plagg is going to have to wait for an opportunity to get Adrien alone to reconnect with him." 

 

"That shouldn't be too hard," Master Fu said. "As soon as they realize that Adrien is now human, they will have to send him away from the Hall of Guardians. After that, finding him alone should be easy." 

 

They stood in silence for a couple more minutes, until the police and ambulance showed up to take care of the students.  

 

Master Fu turned and walked away, heading back to his home, Wayzz beside him, pulling the hood up over his head in case he came across any harbingers. 

 

"Is it alright to leave like that, Master?" Wayzz asked. "Shouldn't you talk to them at some point? Explain things to them? Train them?" 

 

Master Fu smiled, feeling the weight of a thousand centuries weighing on him. "Considering what happened the last time I trained someone, I don't think that's a good idea." 

 

People were starting to wake up, and several of them stared at him like he was insane, probably because they couldn't see Wayzz and it looked like he was talking to himself. 

 

Master Fu didn't care. He had no problems with having the reputation of being a crazy old man. Sometimes he even deserved it. 

 

Wayzz was silent for a moment. "But Master, if we leave them on their own..." 

 

"They will be fine," Master Fu said. "Tikki and Plagg will train them. They will figure it out. We must have faith in our new protectors." 

 

"Yes, Master," Wayzz said. 

 

They walked the rest of the way home in silence. 

 

Master Fu opened the closet and pulled out a shield. He held it in his hands for a moment, smiling at the memories that resurfaced. 

 

He turned back to Wayzz and held the shield up. "Shall we?" 

 

Wayzz pulled the hood off his head again and landed on the ground. "Are you sure, Master? If the curse were to set in again..." 

 

He didn't finish his sentence. He didn't need to. 

 

Master Fu smiled at him reassuringly. "I will be fine for a little while. In the meantime, we need to figure out who arranged for all those portals to be open, if we are going to keep the city safe from them. We should start with investigating those other portals." 

 

"TIkki and her new partner closed them all, Master," Wayzz said, frowning. 

 

Master Fu smiled. "I know. But even closed, there is much that can be learned from a portal." 

 

He pulled a dark cloak out of his closet and pulled it on.  "There. Now even the Guardians who have met me won't recognize me." 

 

He walked back out the door, Wayzz following after him. 

 

He headed for the place where the next biggest portal had occurred, right outside of a bakery. 

 

Master Fu knelt down and put his hand on the ground, closing his eyes. 

 

After a minute, he opened them again, frowning. 

 

"What is it, Master?" Wayzz asked. 

 

"There was certainly a Guardian involved with this portal," Master Fu said. "But their involvement was very strange. They were..." 

 

He stopped as his strength gave out, collapsing on the ground, gasping in pain. 

 

Wayzz's arms wrapped around him, and the next thing that Master Fu knew, he was back in his apartment, sitting in a chair. 

 

Wayzz was making tea, his cloak completely off. He hovered in the air as he fixed the tea and poured it into a cup. 

 

He pressed the cup into Master Fu's hands. "Drink this, Master. It will help with the curse." 

 

Master Fu took a sip of tea and then stared at the ceiling. 

 

"Do you remember what you were telling me, Master?" Wayzz asked. "Something about the Guardian's involvement in the portal being strange?" 

 

 Master Fu's brow furrowed. He tried to remember, but he had no idea what Wayzz was talking about. "I'm sorry, old friend," he said. "I don't remember." 

 

"Are you sure?" Wayzz asked gently. "It happened just a little earlier." 

 

Master Fu frowned, staring at the ceiling like it had the answers he was looking for. But the only thing he could remember happening today was the harbinger girl bonding with the reaper. Just like he'd bonded to Wayzz all those years ago, although now he couldn't remember what it felt like, to change from a human into a reaper. 

 

Something about that seemed wrong. 

 

"Wayzz?" Master Fu asked. "Did I used to be human?" 

 

Wayzz let out a quiet sigh. "No, Master," he said softly. "Before our souls were joined together, you were a Guardian." 

 

Master Fu nodded, vague memories slipping in and out of his mind like water: memories of fighting akumas, protecting humans, training other Guardians. "That’s right. I remember now." 

 

Wayzz put his hands gently around Master Fu's and raised the cup to Master Fu's lips. "Drink," he said gently. "You'll feel better." 

 

Master Fu kept staring at the ceiling. "How old was I when we bonded, Wayzz?" 

 

"By Guardian chronology, you were barely more than a youth," Wayzz said. "Please, Master, you must drink." 

 

Master Fu took a sip of the tea. 

 

Suddenly, a memory came rushing back to him.  

 

 _He was standing outside the Sanctuary, the old home of the Guardians before the Hall, guarding it to make sure that no_ _akumas_ _could destroy it._  

 

 _But then she had showed up, screaming for help,_ _akumas_ _swarming her._  

 

 _He didn't know why they were after her._ _Akumas_ _didn't typically attack Guardians,_ _preferring_ _to go after human souls_ _._  

 

 _H_ _e wasn't supposed to leave his post. The Gates could not be left undefended, but she would die without his help._  

 

 _So_ _he left his post._  

 

 _He couldn't remember what had happened next._ _Sudden_ _ly_ _, h_ _e was on the ground, surrounded by_ _akumas_ _, the woman_ _nowhere in sight. The Sanctuary was burning, and he was too wounded to stand._  

 

 _He knew then that he was going to die there, and the_ _akumas_ _were going to harvest his soul. He shuddered to think of the_ _damage they could do with a Guardian's soul._  

 

 _Then he saw the swish of a green cloak, and he turned to his head to see a reaper standing next to him._  

 

 _He held out a hand and ga_ _sped desperately. "Please. Help me."_  

 

 _The reaper's head turned slightly towards him. "I'm sorry," he said. "There's nothing I can do without a..."_  

 

 _The ground in front of them turned black,_ _akumas_ _pouring out of it._  

 

 _"Portal," the reaper vanished, his voice turning into a whisper. He looked back at Master Fu, hesitating for a minute._  

 

 _Then he knelt down, grabbing Master Fu's arms leaning his forehead against Master Fu's. "By the light of the other world, our souls will be joined," he said._  

 

 _Then there was a flash of blinding light._  

 

Master Fu opened his eyes. He doubted any of the other Guardians would have asked a reaper for help, mostly because they would never believe that one would help them. 

 

BUt he had known better. He had already been saved once, by a reaper in a purple cloak. 

 

One of the two reapers who were now missing. 

 

Master Fu had to find out where they were. Soon.

 

If he didn't, then the city of Paris didn't have much time left at all.


	9. The Hall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien wakes up in the Hall of Guardians to discover that everything is different.

_Adrien knew he was dreaming the instant he saw the figure in the blue cloak, the figure that had been haunting him in his sleep for the last couple of years._  

 

 _Ever since his mother disappeared._  

 

 _The figure stood in a room he had never seen_ _before. Most of the floor of the room was empty space, opening up into darkness that went down at least a few floors. If there was something at the bottom, it was too dark and too far down for him to see what it was._  

 

 _Part of the floor wrapped around the room, going past several_ _alc_ _oves_ _. Part of the floor stretched out to the middle of the room in a narrow walkway, connecting to a circular platform._  

 

 _Something was on the platform, but Adrien couldn't see what it was. The blue figure was in his way._  

 

 _"Open your eyes," a low, hissing voice said. It didn't seem to be coming from the blue figure. It didn't seem to be coming from anywhere, really. More like everywhere. "See the world around you for what it is, Adrien. It is not safe. It is broken, and it cannot be fixed."_  

 

_They'd been through this so many times, and it was always the same. Different places, but the same words._

 

 _Adrien frowned. "I'm a Guardian. Protecting the world, fixing it,_ _that's my job." His voice sounded like the voice of a young child, but Adrien didn't let that stop him. "If it's not safe, then I need to make it safe."_  

 

 _The figure shook_ _it_ _s_ _cloaked head. "Do that, and you will know pain. Do that, and you will know death."_  

 

 _Adrien looked down at the ground. "I can't just leave everyone around me to get hurt."_  

 

 _"Not even if it hurts you?" There was something accusatory in the hissing voice._  

 

 _Adrien shook his head, and this time when he spoke, his voice was his again, no longer a child's. "Not even then."_  

 

 

 

Adrien was gaining consciousness slowly, and he didn't like it. 

 

Every little part of him hurt. Even his hair seemed like it hurt, and Adrien was pretty confident that that was never supposed to happen. Adrien thought he probably would have been in less pain if he'd been run over by a truck, and it took him a moment to remember why. 

 

Oh, that was right. 

 

He'd died. 

 

Apparently not all the way though, because if he'd actually died, he'd be in significantly less pain right now. 

 

Adrien opened his eyes. Everything was blurry at first, but after about a minute of blinking, his eyes finally started to focus. 

 

Once he could see, he recognized the room he was in pretty fast. He was in the infirmary, inside the Hall of Guardians. Adrien had only been admitted to the infirmary once himself, but he'd been there several other times when a young Guardian he was training had goofed off and gotten hurt. 

 

He tried to sit up, by someone grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back down. "You're not healed all the way," a gentle voice said. "You need to keep resting." 

 

Adrien laid back down and looked sideways at the person who was talking to him. 

 

Nathalie. 

 

Though she worked as Gabriel Agreste's second in command, and though she was a brilliant tactician, it was a little known fact that Nathalie was much more a healer than she was a fighter. Their best healer, in fact. She didn't often spend time in the infirmary, since it was hard to maintain the fear factor once your soldiers knew you were a healer, and because she had an absolutely terrible bedside manner. 

 

But a dying Guardian would definitely bring her in. Adrien imagined the fact that he was the General's son might have something do with it too. 

 

Adrien frowned at Nathalie. "How long have I been unconscious?" 

 

Nathalie had never been a loud person, but when she answered him, her voice was even quieter than normal. "About three days." 

 

Adrien's eyes felt like they were bugging out of his head. "Three days? I've been unconscious for three days and I'm not fully healed yet?" Disbelief colored his tone, though he didn't mean for it to. He'd never heard of a Guardian taking so long to heal from anything, even when they didn't have any kind of healer helping them. "Why is it taking so long?" 

 

Nathalie bit her lip and looked down. She looked a little upset, which from Nathalie was like full scale weeping and wailing. "Adrien, we need you to tell us what happened inside that building." 

 

Adrien opened his mouth, to tell the truth, that he didn't remember anything after the akuma stabbed him, but then memories started racing through his head. 

 

 _Adrien was_ _laying on the floor, dying._  

 

 _Then there was a flash of light, and he felt something wrapping around him, something like fabric, as strength flooded his being._  

 

 _His eyes opened, but something was strange._  

 

 _Not something._  

 

 _Everything._  

 

 _He'd been lying on the floor, he was sure of it, but now he was standing up, shrouded in a reaper's black cloak, a scythe in his right hand._  

 

 _The room was filled with_ _akumas_ _, and Adrien knew he had to stop them. He couldn't allow them to attack the city._  

 

 _His hand moved on its own, hurling the scythe._  

 

 _It spun around the room with lightning speed, slicing through_ _akumas_ _like they were made of paper._  

 

 _Still, it wouldn't have been enough if the portal hadn't closed, red energy coming in out of nowhere and sealing it shut._  

 

 _Adrien felt a tingle up his spine, like he was in danger._  

 

 _He turned to face the hole in the wall_ _, just in time to see a reaper in a red cloak falling out of the sky._  

 

 _Adrien was moving before he knew what he was doing, running straight to the hole in the wall and leaping out of it, jumping toward the red reaper._  

 

 _He caught her in his arms, and they floated slowly to the ground._  

 

 _The second Adrien's feet touched the ground, all his remaining strength drained out of him, and he collapsed._  

 

 _And then everything went black._  

 

"Adrien?" Nathalie said. Her tone told him that she'd said his name several times already, while he'd been lost in thought. 

 

Adrien forced his eyes to focus on her. She was looking at him with a worried expression, waiting for him to answer her question. 

 

What had she asked him again? 

 

Oh, right. She'd asked him what had happened inside the building. 

 

Adrien hesitated. He should tell her the truth. He had died. The black reaper had saved him. 

 

But the reaper had healed his wounds. When they found him, he had been unconscious, but not wounded. They didn't know he had died. 

 

If he told them he had, his father would probably never let him out of the Hall of Guardians again. 

 

Adrien smiled weakly at Nathalie. "I got hurt by one of the akumas. Lost consciousness. The light from the portal woke me up, but I think that it did something weird to me too." 

 

"Weird is right," Nathalie said, frowning. "Adrien, it made you human." 

 

Adrien stopped breathing, his entire body freezing as he stared at Nathalie. "What?" He managed to breathe after a long moment. 

 

Nathalie looked away from him. "You're human now." She paused for a second. "We were waiting until you woke up to tell you. Adrien, you have to leave the Hall of Guardians, as soon as you're well enough to walk. We... we can't have a human in these walls. Not even one who used to be a Guardian. Not even you." 

 

Adrien felt like he'd just been punched in the stomach. He stared at her in horror for a long moment. "But...  this is my home. This is where I grew up. I... I've never lived anywhere else. I belong here! Nathalie, I have to stay here!" 

 

The words burst out of him uncontrollably. 

 

He'd begged to leave the Hall so many times. He'd begged to get to have a more dangerous, more important job. He'd begged for something more than occasionally being able to train kids and patrolling safe city areas by himself. 

 

He'd begged for freedom. 

 

But he'd only wanted it so that he wouldn't be so alone. Set apart from the other Guardians because he was the General's son, constantly being kept away from danger, away from others so that he'd be safe, his father too busy to see him.

 

He just wanted not to be alone. 

 

Now they were going to send him away by himself, and that was the last thing Adrien wanted. 

 

Nathalie looked at him with calm eyes, but Adrien knew her well enough to know that she was sad too. "I'm sorry, Adrien. Your father has already made all the arrangements. You should rest for a couple of hours, but then you have to leave."

 

She stood up and started to walk away, but then she paused and looked back at him. "And Adrien?"  
  
  


Adrien looked at her, feeling like his world was falling apart. "Yeah?"

 

"You can't ever come back."


	10. The Hospital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marinette wakes up in the hospital to discover that everything is different.

_It took a while for Marinette to figure out that she was dreaming._  

 _She was standing in a strange place, on a narrow walkway in the middle of_ _a_ _room. Except for the edges of the room, the rest of it had no floor, and she could see it went down a few stories, but the ground down below was shrouded in darkness. She had no idea what was down there._  

 _In front of her, the walkway connected to the platform in_ _the_ _middle_ _of the room. She could see something bright, like a light, and something purple, like cloth, but she couldn't make out what_ _it was._  

 _There was a figure in her way_ _,_ _wrapped in a blue cloak._  

 _A reaper._  

 _"You shouldn't be here."_  

 _The voice didn't seem to come from the figure. It seemed to come from the walls themselves, low and hissing, furious at her._  

 _"You don't belong in this world. Forsake your reaper._ _Run away, human, harbinger_ _. Run away from us, and never return, and we will spare your pathetic life."_  

 _Marinette swallowed hard. "Run away from what? I... I have no idea what you're talking about."_  

 _This time, when the voice spoke, it was less angry_ _and more condescending. "You will soon enough. And when you face us, if you want to survive, you will run away. You will not fight us. You will not challenge us. You will know your place, human, and that is on your knees, begging for your_ _life."_  

 _The darkness floors below started to rise, swallowing the stories below Marinette, until finally it swallowed her too._  

 _There was nothing but darkness. Marinette screamed, but she couldn't even hear her own voice._  

 

"Marinette!" 

Someone grabbed her shoulders and Marinette's eyes flew open. She hadn't even known they were closed. 

Her mom's hands were on her shoulders, holding her off the bed. Her dad stood next to her, his hand on her mom's shoulder, both of them looking at Marinette with eyes full of concern. 

"Marinette, are you alright?" Her dad asked. "You were screaming." 

Marinette blinked. It took her a moment to take in her surroundings, to realize she was in a hospital. It took her a moment longer to remember what had happened to her, why she was here. Why her entire body felt like a mountain had collapsed on top of it. 

The light. It was going to destroy the city. 

She'd channeled it up through her, sending it to the sky. 

Then she was falling out of the sky. 

She couldn't remember what had happened next. 

It took her another moment to remember that her dad had asked her a question. 

She frowned, thinking about her dream. The voice that had told her to forsake her reaper. She assumed that it meant the reaper who had saved her life. The reaper she had sort of... bonded with. 

She could hardly tell her parents about that. Especially since she couldn't even be sure it was real.

Maybe she'd hallucinated it.

Reapers didn't act like that, after all.

"I'm fine," Marinette said, smiling weakly. "I must have been having a nightmare. I... I can't remember it now, though. I'm okay." 

Her mom smiled widely and wrapped her arms around her in a hug. "I'm glad you're okay. We were so worried about you." 

Her dad's arms went around both of them, and Marinette sank into her parents' embrace with a relieved smile. 

Her parents finally released her and stepped back, smiling at her reassuringly. Marinette smiled back, and then someone slammed into her from the other side. 

Marinette let out a surprised yelp as arms wrapped tightly around her, a face smushing against hers. 

"Alya," Marinette gasped. "I... can't... breathe." 

Her parents chuckled. "We'll go tell the doctor you're awake," her mom said, and the two of them slipped out of the room. 

Alya released Marinette. "Sorry, girl. You just all had us worried. Most of us woke up three days ago. Though Alix did take thicker skin. Even Nathaniel and Rose woke up pretty fast." 

Marinette blinked. "What? How long have I been out? And who are Rose and Nathaniel?"   
"A week, exactly. I think Rose is with Juleka, but Nathaniel is right there," Alya said, pointing to the far side of the room. 

A boy stood there, leaning against the wall, his head bowed like he was trying not to be noticed. He had bright red hair. 

Marinette frowned. "Uh... I don't think I know him." 

"Yeah," Alya said, smiling slightly. "A lot has happened in the last week since you've been unconscious. We've got a lot to talk about. Starting with the fact that everyone in Paris can see reapers now." 

Marinette's jaw dropped. "What?" 

Alya nodded. "Yep. Everyone's pretty freaked out by that. The whole city just became harbingers. It's pretty freaky. Whatever that light was, it really changed things up. And that's not even the weirdest part." 

Marinette almost didn't want to ask. "What's the weirdest part?" 

"Remember how I told you about the heralds? They see angels?" 

Marinette nodded slowly. 

Alya pointed at Nathaniel. "He's a guardian angel. Rose too. Our entire class, and Ms. Bustier can see the guardians now. Guess we all became heralds as well as harbingers. We think it's because we were closer to that weird light that knocked us all out." 

Marinette looked over at Nathaniel. "You're really not... human?" 

Nathaniel met her eyes for a brief second, then looked back down. He nodded quickly. 

Marinette looked at Alya. "Everyone can really see the reapers?" 

Alya nodded. "Yep. A city full of harbingers. Guess I don't need to right a blog about them now," she said with a smile. 

Marinette smiled weakly back. 

Her parents walked back into the room, along with a doctor. She smiled at Marinette, but there was something behind her eyes that had Marinette bracing herself for bad news. 

"Am I going to be okay?" Marinette asked. She was already feeling better, the pain in her body having fading considerably. It still hurt a bit, and she felt really weak, but she felt okay. 

The doctor glanced at Alya. "All health information is confidential..." 

"She can stay," Marinette said. "I'd tell her later anyway. What's wrong with me?" 

The doctor's lips pursed together. "Unfortunately, at this point, it's impossible to tell." 

Marinette blinked. "What do you mean?" 

The doctor's eyes flicked over to her parents. They looked pretty calm. She looked back at Marinette. Marinette was pretty sure she didn't look nearly as calm. "I already explained this to your parents, but you've changed. We can't make any sense of what happened to you, and we have no way to predict how those changes will affect. We're not even sure what they are. It's unlike anything anyone has ever seen before." 

Marinette stared at her. "I don't understand. What does that mean?" She grabbed onto Alya's hand like it was the only thing keeping her head above water. Alya squeezed back. Her mom sat down on her other side and took Marinette's other hand gently in both of hers. 

The doctor hesitated for a long moment, clearly trying to establish some composure. Then she spoke quietly, her voice level but strained. "It means that you're no longer completely... human." 

Marinette couldn't breathe. She looked down, her eyes frozen wide open, as her brain tried to process what she had just been told. 

She wasn't human anymore. 

Alya frowned at the doctor. "What? How is that possible?" 

The doctor sighed. "How did that light make everyone in Paris a harbinger? We have no idea what it was, or what it was capable of doing. Many of your classmates remembered Marinette still being inside the building when it went off, so she probably got more of it than anyone. Who knows what it might have done? We don't have tests for this. We're just going to have to wait and see what happens to her." 

Marinette's dad looked at the doctor. "Can we take her home?" 

The doctor nodded slowly. "If you want to. The only thing we can say about what's happened to her for sure, is that she is capable of surviving things that should kill anyone, and that she heals at a heightened rate. If anything, she's too healthy, so she doesn't have to stay here. However, we would recommend if she displays any unusual behavior, if you observe anything out of the norm beyond increased healing, that you bring her back here immediately. And for the time being, I have to recommend once a week checkups, until we know all of the effects that light had on her." 

Her parents glanced at each other, then nodded slowly. 

"It wasn't a light."   
Marinette glanced over at the unexpected voice, quiet and certain. Alya looked too, but none of the adults reacted. 

Maybe they really couldn’t see Nathaniel. 

Nathaniel met her eyes again, then looked away immediately. "It wasn't just a light. It was a portal. To the Other World." 

"Marinette."   
Marinette looked away from Nathaniel, to meet her dad's eyes. 

He smiled at her warmly, leaning over to rest a hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay? Can you walk"  

Actually, she was. All the pain was gone now. She smiled at him nodded. 

He smiled back at her, his eyes full of warmth and affection, her mother looking at her just as warmy. "Then let's go home." 


	11. Plagg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien leaves the Hall of the Guardians.

Adrien stared up at the ceiling.

He was supposed to leave the Hall four days ago.

That hadn't worked out as planned. He hadn't even had to try to stall leaving his home forever. The second he stood up when Nathalie told him it was time to leave, his legs had given out, and he'd fallen to the ground.

It had hurt, a lot, and Adrien had stayed on the floor for a moment, gasping in pain.

Then he'd passed out.

According to Nathalie later, he'd broken one of his ribs again just from the fall, along with other injuries.

She'd ended up insisting that he not be moved until he healed more, and as a result, Adrien had spent the last four days in bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, alone except for Nathalie occasionally coming in to check on him.

It was probably good practice for how the rest of his life was going to be.

At least she'd given in after the first two days and let him have his sword by the side of the bed.

He was under strict orders not to lift it, not to exert himself at all, but every so often he'd reach over and wrap his hand around the handle. He felt better, safer, with it in his hand.

And if he closed his eyes, he could remember his mom.

He'd been much younger than, much smaller as well, when his mom had first started teaching him.

He could remember being barely big enough and strong enough to lift to lift even the wooden practice sword his mom was using to teach him. Her arms wrapped around him, her hands over his as she showed him how to hold the sword, how to swing it. He remembered her making jokes and rhymes about every move she taught him, until they had to take a break because Adrien was laughing too hard to continue.

Everyone thought he could fight as well as he did because he was General Gabriel Agreste's son, but the truth was, almost everything about Adrien came more from Emilie.

She'd given him this sword only days before she had disappeared. 

She had taught him to always name his weapons, even the practice ones, to help him form a connection, to help him think of them as a part of himself.

He'd still been trying to think of a name when she'd disappeared, and then naming it became impossible.

His father wouldn't have approved of it anyway. He'd call it sentimental, pointless. He'd say that a creating a bond with an inanimate thing was impossible, and Adrien was worried that if his father thought he was too attached to the sword, that he was dependent on it, he'd take it away.

So the sword stayed unnamed.

Maybe he should have named it. Maybe then, he would have been powerful enough to stop the akumas without dying. Maybe he would have been able to protect the city better if he'd done what his mom had told him to do.

Adrien shook his head to snap himself out of it. His mom wouldn't have wanted him to name the sword something random just for the sake of naming it. She would have wanted him to call it something that meant something to him, and she would have understood if he couldn't do that without her around.

She would have even understood this, his becoming human. She would have known what to do about it. Everything would have been fine, if she had still been around.

Adrien pushed those thoughts out of his mind. They would only make it hurt more that she was gone, and he couldn't afford that.

Especially not now.

He heard the door open, but he didn't look. He knew who it was. Nathalie, coming in to tell him that it was time to leave.

"Adrien."

The voice wasn’t the one he'd been expecting to hear. He turned his head, surprised, to look at the person walking softly towards him, and his eyes went wider when he saw her. He forced himself to sit up. "Kagami."

Kagami walked over to stand by him. "Nathalie said you're leaving the Hall for a while."

She didn't say anything about him becoming human. His father probably had ordered that stayed a secret.

Adrien nodded. "Yeah."

Kagami looked away from him. "How unfortunate. I was hoping I'd be able to challenge you again when you got better."

Adrien smiled weakly. "Again? You know those matches never have a clear winner."

Kagami smiled slightly. "And they never will if we don't keep doing them."

Adrien laughed, though the sound was pretty weak. "Yeah, well, maybe we'll get a chance to have one again at some point in the future."

Kagami's eyes snapped to his. "Maybe? At some point? That... that makes it sound like you might not be coming back. Ever. That can't be true."

Adrien's eyes widened. He tried to think of another explanation for his words, but another voice cut the conversation short.

"Adrien." Nathalie's voice was unperturbed as both Adrien and Kagami turned to stare at her. She glanced sideways at Kagami for a second, and Kagami turned on her heels and fled out of the room. Nathalie's eyes moved back to Adrien. "It's time to go."

Adrien nodded, grabbed his sword, and started trying to stand. It was a struggle.

Nathalie grabbed his arm and slung it over her shoulder, using it to pull him to his feet. She helped him walk out of the infirmary and steered him to the front of the building.

Adrien half hoped he would see his father, or any of the Guardians, really, waiting at the front door to say goodbye to him, but no one was there.

Nathalie led him out to the door, through a courtyard, to a car that was waiting for him outside of the gates of the Hall. A man he didn't know sat in the front seat, a man built like a gorilla. Adrien would definitely have remembered him, so he must not have been from the Hall.

Nathalie helped Adrien get into the back seat of the car and then climbed in herself.

They drove into the city, and then the man driving had pulled over in front of a mansion. High walls surrounded the building.

Adrien sighed heavily, any hope that his new home wouldn’t be just another prison dashed. It seemed that the only change was that his confinement was now solitary.

Nathalie got out of the car and then helped Adrien out. To his surprise, the man who had driven them got out as well.

Nathalie brought him just inside the doors and then stopped, clearly not planning on going any further.

She let go of Adrien, and he stepped away from her, swaying only slightly.

Nathalie stared straight ahead as she spoke, not meeting his eyes. "This is your new home. He," she gestured at the gorilla-like man "will be serving as your new bodyguard. I will be checking on you daily. Your father asks that you remain inside the mansion or its courtyard at all times, and that you continue your training. He will come to check on your progress once a week, unless you cause any trouble." Her lips pressed together in a thin line. "I would recommend you not disobey. You know how your father is about having to take time out of his schedule for unexpected problems."

Adrien looked away from her, unable to keep his response from sounding sullen. "Yeah, I know."

He expected Nathalie to leave, but she said his name instead.   
He turned to look back at her. She held out her hand, still not meeting his eyes. "Your sword. You know a human can't possess a Guardian's weapon. Your father has provided normal weapons for you to train with."

Adrien stared at her in shock, though he really should have seen this coming. He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it just as quickly.

There was no point.

He reached his hand out slowly, reluctantly, until the sword touched Nathalie's open palm. Her hand closed around it, and Adrien let go.

He looked away as Nathalie turned and left, the door closing behind her and Adrien's sword.

Adrien looked at his new bodyguard, blinking hard. "Where is my room?"

The guard pointed up the stairs at the second floor, and Adrien turned away and headed up the stairs, moving as quickly as his not-quite fully healed body would allow.

He entered the room, not taking in the time to absorb anything in it but the bed, which he moved to immediately, with the intention of sinking down onto it and not moving for many, many days.

"Hey, Adrien."

Adrien jumped and turned around to find himself staring at a kid who looked like he was about seven wearing something like a black leotard. He had black hair, black lips, dark skin, and green cat eyes and was  _floating in the air,_ his head resting on his hands. Something twitched on his head, and then and only then did Adrien notice the cat ears.

Adrien stared at the kid, his brain short-circuiting, trying to figure out what the kid was, because he definitely wasn't a Guardian.

The kid yawned. "Man, I thought I was never going to get a chance to speak to you alone. So many people always hovering over you. How do you stand it?"

Adrien blinked. "What are ..?" He stopped himself. That question seemed rude. "Who are you?"

The kid grinned, his lips pulling back to reveal pointed teeth. "I'm Plagg."

Adrien stared at him. That didn't help.

The kid sighed. "I'm the reaper that saved your life."

Adrien blinked. "You don't look like a reaper."

But the kid was no longer listening to him. He was floating away from Adrien, checking out all the stuff in Adrien's new room. He seemed especially interested in the foosball table. "Ooh, this is nice."

Adrien moved to the other side of the foosball table in an attempt to get himself back into the reaper's line of sight. "If you saved me, do you know why I'm human now?"

Plagg gave him a bored look. "Human-ish."

Adrien frowned. "What?"

Plagg floated away again, this time to inspect the remote to Adrien's new tv.

He had a tv. That was going to take some getting used to.

Plagg bit the remote, and Adrien yelped and moved back toward him. "I don't think you're supposed to eat that."

He snatched the remote away from Plagg.

Plagg looked unbothered by that, his tail swishing lazily. "You're only human-ish."

Adrien blinked. "What?"

"Well, in order for a Guardian to become fully human, they have to fall in love with a human. I only made you human-ish. There's a difference."

"What's the difference?" Adrien asked, but Plagg was already gone, floating off to look at something else.

Adrien sighed. If he wanted answers, it was looking like he was going to have to catch Plagg first.

Only, how in the world could anyone catch a reaper?


	12. Tikki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marinette returns home

The car ride home from the hospital was peaceful.

They did dinner before they did anything else, and that was peaceful too.

And then Marinette headed upstairs to her room, and that was peaceful.

Then she stepped inside her room, and after that, nothing was peaceful, and possibly never would be peaceful again, not for the rest of her life.

Because Marinette had just walked into her room and closed the door behind her when she heard a voice.

"Hello, Marinette."

Marinette screamed like a banshee and stumbled forward in surprise, spinning around as she did to look at the person behind her.

It was a girl who looked like she was about eight, with red lips and red hair tied in pigtails with ribbons and ancient blue eyes, wearing a red and black dotted pigtail.

Marinette stared at her with wide eyes for a second, before the word fell unbidden from her lips. "Tikki."

Tikki smiled at her, cheerful and peaceful. "You remember me. Good. I'm glad."

"Marinette," her mom called. "I heard you screaming. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Mom," Marinette called. She looked at Tikki and spoke again, this time being careful to keep her voice down. "What are you doing here?"

Tikki floated through the air. Marinette realized only now that her scythe and cloak were nowhere in sight. She floated over to Marinette's bed, scanning Marinette's room as she went, before she landed cross legged on the bed. She patted the bed next to her, smiling invitingly at Marinette.

Marinette didn't move.

Tikki's smile didn't falter. "Sit, sit. We have a lot we need to talk about."

Marinette frowned but still didn't move. "I was just at the hospital."

Tikki nodded. "I know."

Marinette balled her hand into fists in an attempt to stop them from shaking. "They told me that I wasn't completely human anymore."

Tikki nodded again. "That's true. I wanted to talk to you about it earlier, but I had to wait for you to be alone."

Marinette's eyes widened. "You... you knew that I wasn't human anymore. Did you... did you do this to me?"

The light faded out of Tikki's eyes, replaced by something ancient and tired and cold. "I'm sorry. But if you'd been caught in the light of the Other World, you would have died. It was the only way to save you. I had to make you a Wielder."

Marinette blinked several times. "A what?"

Tikki patted the bed next to her again. "Sit. Let me explain."

Marinette moved slowly, and took a seat cautiously beside Tikki. "There was this Guardian at the hospital. Nathaniel. He said something about the Other World too. About how the light was a... portal to it."

Tikki nodded. "The Other World. The home of monsters and akumas." She glanced sidways and smiled slightly at the cluelessness that Marinette was sure was written all over her face. "They're... demons for lack of a better world. It is their goal to steal and corrupt the souls of humans. Once corrupted, the souls become a power source for the akumas. A power source that they intend to use to invade and take over this world. That's why they opened that portal in your classroom. They were intending to invade your world."

Tikki paused then, possibly to try and give Marinette a chance to absorb what she was telling her.

But Marinette's brain was no longer working correctly. It was screeching around in circles, going past the same few thoughts and over and over again without comprehending any of them.

Monsters. There were monsters.

Corrupting people.

They'd tried to invade her city, to take her world.

And the portal should have killed her. Would have killed her, without Tikki.

Tikki smiled sympathetically at Marinette. "I know it's a lot to take in."

Marinette looked at Tikki. "There are monsters. That's a real thing?"

Tikki nodded. "Very. Of many different kinds. But they can't usually be found in your world."

Marinette nodded slowly. "Okay. Fine." She had more questions about monsters, but she decided to wait until later to ask those. "And there are demons who try to steal people's souls?"

"The akumas," Tikki confirmed. "They're the reason why the Guardians and the Reapers exist."

Marinette blinked in surprise. "What? What do you mean?"

Tikki gazed off into the distance, quiet for a long moment. "Akumas have a couple of ways that they can corrupt souls. They can wait for someone to get really upset. And then they feed off of those feelings, pushing that human to behave in more and more destructive ways. And once the human is sufficiently evil, they drag them into the Other World."

Marinette stared at Tikki with wide eyes. "That's... terrifying."

Tikki nodded, her face sober. "It is. But it's not their only way. They can also get people killed, or attack them while they're dying. And as the person dies, they steal their souls. They take them to the Other World and corrupt them there.

Marinette felt like she couldn't breathe. "That's... horrible. And you said the Guardians and the Reapers exist... because of them. Are you...?" Her voice trailed off. She didn't know how to ask what she was trying to ask. How was she supposed to word it? Did you use to be a human and then your soul got corrupted? It seemed rude, and it also didn't seem right. Everything about Tikki seemed so sweet, and so pure.

Tikki smiled a little. "Reapers and Guardians exist to stop the akumas and the monsters."

"Oh." Marinette couldn't help but feel relieved. Her savior was a good person after all. "How do you do that?"

"Guardians are responsible for keeping the akumas from corrupting people or killing them. As long as the humans are alive, Guardians are responsible for keeping them safe. Once they die, it is the Reapers' job to make to sure that their souls are able to pass on without being harvested by the akumas. It is also our job to close the portals between the worlds whenever they open, and if we can, to prevent them from opening in the first place." She paused for a second, looking hard at Marinette. "And that's where you come in."

"What?" Marinette stared at Tikki. "I don't understand. What does that have to do with me?"

Tikki met Marinette's eyes and spoke slowly and evenly. "The light, the portal, was going to kill you. To save you, I gave away a lot of my power." She held out her arms. "It's why I don't my cloak or scythe. You have them. You're their keeper. Thier wielder. My wielder. The holder of nearly all of my power. The power to close portals, and purify souls, and rid the world of akumas. It's all yours now. You're no longer completely human because now, you're about half-reaper."

Marinette fell backwards on the bed. "What? I'm a what? But I can't... that's not... that's ipmossible."

Tikki blinked. "Did you mean impossible?"

Marinette nodded vigorously. "Yeah. It's ipmossible! I can't... I'm not... I can't be a reaper."

"You're not," Tikki said, frowning. "You're half a reaper. I'm the other half. Neither of us can be a reaper unless we're together. And without me..." She closed her eyes. "The world can't afford to lose any more reapers. The world needs me." She opened her eyes and looked at Marinette. "And I need you."


	13. Visit to the Class

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathalie holds a meeting with the class to talk about the light.

Ms. Bustier had just started teaching when the door opened and a woman walked in.

She looked normal enough, wearing a dark pantsuit, dark hair pulled up on in a bun. But something about her screamed "not normal" in Alya's head.

Maybe it was the surprising streak of red in her hair. Maybe it was the emotionlessness on her face.

Or maybe it was the fact that the second she walked in, Rose gasped loudly, and then she and Nathaniel hurriedly rose to their feet to stand with their feet a shoulder width apart, their hands behind their back.

"Um, excuse me," Ms. Bustier said. "But class has already started, and you can't be in here without permission from the principal..."

She stopped talking as the woman glanced over at her with cold eyes. Then the woman looked straight ahead again. "I'm sorry to break your protocol, but I can't ask the principal for permission, since he can't see me."

Everyone stared at her in shock. Even Alix and Kim snapped out of their half-asleep states to stare at her.

The woman who had just walked into the room looked at them expressionlessly, then shifted her gaze to Rose and Nathaniel. "It is protocol to salute when a superior officer walks into the room, and  _wait_ for them to tell you to stand at ease."

She waited for a moment like she was expecting something. Rose nodded understandingly, but other than that, neither Rose nor Nathaniel moved.

Alya blinked, staring at the woman with wide eyes. "You're a Guardian."

She hadn't seen any Guardians besides Rose and Nathaniel. She hadn't even been sure how many of them there were.

The woman nodded.  "I am Lieutenant Sancoeur of the Guardians Organization, but you may call me Nathalie. I am here on behalf of the General to talk to you about what happened to your class after the incident nine days ago."

"You mean with the light and the almost dying and the waking up and being able to see the Guardians," Alix said, leaning her head against one hand. She looked like she was about to fall asleep.

Nathalie nodded curtly. "Yes. We have reason to believe that becoming heralds is not the only thing that has happened to you. We waited to talk to you until we were sure, and now we are." She paused for just a second, scanning the classroom. She looked at Ms. Bustier. "Some of the seats are empty. Are all your students here? If they are not, I'd prefer to wait until they are all here to explain."

Ms. Bustier blinked. "There are always three seats missing. The only one who isn't here is Marinette."

Nathalie frowned. "That's the harbinger, right? The one who ran back into the building while the rest of you were outside?"

Ms. Bustier nodded.

"That's fine then," Nathalie said. "We'll need to follow up with her anyway, see what she saw inside the building." She looked back at the class. "As you all aware, the light made it so that the entire city could see the reapers, and made it so that this class could see the Guardians as well."

"Right. Because we were closer to the light, right?" Alya asked.

Nathalie glanced at her. "But you weren't closer to the light. Your class was the only one in the entire school who was outside of the school when the light started appeared, and yet you are also the only class in the school who gained the ability to see the Guardians." She paused for a moment. "So it was not your proximity to the light that made you heralds."

Alya blinked. "Then what was it?"

Nathalie looked away from her, staring straight ahead instead. "We have not yet been able to determine that. But we have determined that being able to see the Guardians is not the only change that has happened to your class."

"What? What are you talking about?" Alix asked. "What other changes have happened?"

Nathalie was silent for a long moment. "Heralds and harbingers are not the only kind of extraordinary people that live in this world. There are other powers in this world. Before the light, this class already possessed four people with powers, though only three of you were aware of your abilities."

"Hang on," Alix said. "There were more people with powers in this class than just Marinette?"

Nathalie nodded. "Yes. And now, it seems that the light has made the powers of those people stronger. And the rest of you have gained abilities, all different from each other. If you haven't started noticing them already, you will start noticing them soon. You have powers now, and for some of you, those powers are quite dangerous." She paused for a second. "You should try to learn to control them. If you're not careful, one of you could very easily get yourselves killed." Her eyes flicked for just a second to Mylene, and then to Ivan. "Or kill someone else."

She fell silent then, and the whole class was quiet, staring at her in horror.

Ten days ago, none of them would have even believed her. Ten days ago, everyone would have dismissed every word out of her mouth.

But now, everything was different.

The entire city was different. Everyone inside of it had been turned into a harbinger, and so all the old rules no longer applied to them.

And things were even more different for their class. Nine days had been just enough for them to get used to the fact that they could now see the Guardians, that the Guardians were a real thing, though they didn’t know exactly what they did. Something about protecting humans from... something.

And maybe they could feel it too, just like Alya could. Feel that something more than that had changed in her bones. Maybe the whole class could feel that too.

Maybe that was why when Nathalie told them their powers might put the whole city in danger, their only reaction was horror, not doubt, not surprise.

"Well, that was all the message I had to deliver," Nathalie said. "Rose and Nathaniel can answer any further questions."

She turned like she was going to leave.

Alya pushed herself up to her feet so fast her chair fell over. "Hold up. You can't just tell us that we could kill someone and then just leave. You have to say something else. Tell us what to do. Tell us how we can...  _not_  kill people. Tell us what powers we have. Tell us something!"

Nathalie looked at Alya. She didn't say anything, but Alya understood anyway.

This had never happened before.

They didn't know what to do.

Nathalie stepped outside, and the door closed behind her.

The entire class sat in silence for a long moment. Finally, Alix broke the silence. “So, what do we do now? About these powers?”

Alya looked over at her. ”Well, if we’re all going to get powers, then we’ll all be in the same boat. We should help each other."

Kim looked over at her. ”How are we supposed to do that?”

Alya frowned, thinking. ”Maybe we could meet up a couple times a week and... practice, or something. At least we can talk about what’s happening to us, because if we all have powers, things are about to get weird.”

Ms. Bustier beamed at her. ”I think that's a wonderful idea, Alya. It’s always good to support each other.”

Alya smiled at Ms. Bustier and scanned the faces of the rest of her classmates, to see what they thought about it.

Nino smiled supportively at her. Sabrina looked like she wanted to say something, but she glanced at Chloe and pressed her lips together in a clear effort to suppress her own words.

Chloe was looking away from Alya, making it impossible to read her expression.

Max looked intrigued. Kim looked bored, but in a weird way, like he was trying to hide some other emotion.

Rose beamed at her like she thought it was a great idea too. Juleka looked less enthusiastic, but still on bored.

Next to Alix, Mylene was smiling almost as big as Rose, though she didn’t have Rose’s energy.

Alix looked skeptical. Actually, she looked downright suspicious, squinting at Alya like she thought she was up to something. “Right. And you’re sure you’re not just saying that because you want to post about our powers on your blog or something?”

Alya frowned. “I wouldn’t post something that personal without permission. Besides, making sure that none of us kill ourselves or anyone else takes priority over my blog.”

Alix blinked, looking surprised.

The rest of the class didn’t look surprised. They looked confused, like they had no idea what Alya was talking about.

After a moment of awkward silence, Rose spoke up. “I think it’s a great idea! And I think we should get started today after school!”

Nino looked at Alya. “You said Marinette could see Nathaniel too, right?”

Alya nodded.

“Do you think that means she has powers too?” Nino asked.

Alya flashed back to the hospital, to the doctor telling her that Marinette wasn’t even human anymore. “Yeah, I think so. I’ll tell her about the meeting at lunch so that she can come too.” She looked at Ms. Bustier. “You got caught in that blast too. You should come too.”

Ms. Bustier pursed her lips. “I can’t tonight. But I'll try to make it some other time. Now, we do still need to have class.”

Alya nodded and righted her chair so she could sit down, but she could hardly sit still.

She couldn’t wait for school to be over.


	14. Visit to Marinette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathalie has a meeting with Marinette to talk about the light.

Nathalie stepped out of the classroom and walked down the stairs, her mind still turning.

So many of the students in that room were dangerous. So many potential problems to Gabriel’s plan, and they didn’t even know all the student’s abilities yet. Nathalie had sent a lot of Guardians to tail them secretly, and she now knew almost everything about all of them, but some of their abilities had not made any appearances, but she knew they had them.

Of course, not all of the students were threats. Rose and Nathaniel were unchanged, and they had never been something to worry about before. It would most likely take years for Sabrina to develop her abilities enough for them to be dangerous. And Kim; unless the light had changed his abilities from what they were to something new, they had no reason to worry about him. The same was true of Chloe and Marinette, though Marinette being unchanged seemed unlikely.

Nino, on the other hand, would be dangerous even if his powers were no different than they had been, assuming of course, that he eventually recognized the powers he had been blind to for years. Mylene and Ivan’s powers had the potential to either very helpful, or very, very problematic. Alix and Max’s abilities could only be problems. Alya’s powers were so far unknown, but something in the girl’s eyes alarmed Nathalie. Juleka’s powers were also unknown, and though the Guardians who had tailed her seemed to think her quiet demeanor meant she would not be a threat, Nathalie knew better than to dismiss anyone simply because they didn’t speak much. She wouldn’t feel comfortable about Juleka until she knew what the girl was capable of.

She headed out of the building. Once she was outside, she switched from her calm walk to a more normal Guardian speed, which was, in a word, fast.

It didn’t take her long at all to get to her last stop before she could return to the Hall: Marinette Dupain-Cheng's house.

She walked past Marinette’s oblivious father in the bakery, and then past her blissfully ignorant mother in the kitchen, heading up to Marinette’s room.

She stopped there to knock on the door, not wanting to just barge in.

She heard a panicked shriek and a lot of scrambling, and then finally Marinette opened the door.

“Are you alright, Marinette?” Marinette’s mother called, turning around to look at her daughter, her eyes looking straight through Nathalie. Marinette’s eyes widened in the realization that her mother couldn’t see Nathalie.

“I’m fine,” Marinette said with a bright smile. “I was just wondering if I could get some more soup a little later? I’m not hungry right now but I think I should eat more.” Her mother smiled and nodded, and then turned back around, and Marinette waved for Nathalie to come in.

Nathalie stepped into the room, and Marinette closed the door and moved away from it.

“You seem to be something of a natural secret keeper,” Nathalie remarked, meeting Marinette’s eyes. “You haven’t spent very long seeing Guardians, and you’re already very discreet. You must be experienced at keeping things from your parents.”

Marinette smiled weakly. “That’s not it. I’m just trying not to worry them, and I don’t know how to tell them what’s going on, or if I should...”

“You shouldn’t,” Nathalie said, and Marinette looked startled at her declaration. “Nothing good ever comes out of people who have no powers finding out about people do. Just look at the discrimination harbingers face.”

Marinette frowned. “My parents wouldn’t discriminate against me.”

Nathalie nodded. “Of course not. But they also wouldn’t understand. They would worry about you, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything to help you. It would cause them frustration and stress, and if they hovered over you, they might stop you from finding out how to handle the changes that have happened to you since the light came, and that could get someone hurt.”

Marinette swallowed hard. “You know about the changes that have happened to me?”

Nathalie pursed her lips. “That’s actually what I’m here to talk to you about. The rest of your class were changed. The light gave them all powers, those that didn’t have them already. You, of course, were already a harbinger, so it’s possible that the light didn’t do anything else to you because of that. But it’s also possible that it did do something. And if you’ve developed a new ability, the Guardians are the best people to help you control your abilities. To keep you safe.”

“To keep me safe,” Marinette echoed, her eyes unfocusing, looking past Nathalie at something behind her. Then she frowned, and her eyes snapped back to Nathalie. “The doctor at the hospital said that I healed faster than I should have. Other than that and the fact that I see Guardians now, I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Everything’s exactly how it was before. For me, at least. Not for the city.”

Nathalie nodded. “Very well. Make you sure you tell Nathaniel or Rose if you notice any other changes, or anything else out of the ordinary.”

Marinette nodded and smiled cheerfully. “Of course. I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as anything strange happens.”

Nathalie studied her face for a minute, then moved to the door leading up to the balcony, stepping out the door and leaping off the edge, hearing Marinette’s startled shriek behind her.

But Nathalie just landed lightly on the roof and walked across it, heading back toward the hall. She broke into a run once she was out of Marinette’s sight, and ran until she came into sight of the Hall, when she jumped down to the street and switched to a controlled walk.

She strolled in through the gates of the Hall and headed back to Gabriel’s office.

She entered and waited for him to notice her, not speaking until he finally looked up. “I told the class that they had abilities,” she said. “Though I didn’t tell them what their abilities were.”

Gabriel nodded approvingly.

“And I visited Marinette Dupain-Cheng. She said that the only thing she noticed that was different about her since the light was the fact that she healed faster than a normal human.” Nathalie paused for a moment. “I believe she’s lying about that.”

Gabriel nodded again, this more time more slowly. “She doesn’t trust us,” he said finally. “That’s unsurprising. She couldn’t see us ten days ago. Given time, I’m sure she’ll open up and tell us anything else that might be happening.”

Nathalie nodded, though she wasn’t as convinced. She remembered how quickly Marinette had realized her mother couldn’t see Nathalie, and how fast she’d come up with an excuse, and how sweet her expression had been. The girl was clever, and if she wasn’t telling her parents what was going on, then trust wasn’t the issue.

Gabriel studied something on his desk for a moment. “And how is Adrien doing?”

Nathalie hesitated. “He... he’s sullen. He won’t say much to me, and he hasn’t spoken to the bodyguard at all. He hasn’t asked to leave the house, but he seems... agitated. I think he feels trapped.” She paused again, not sure that she dared to say the next words. “Sir, I know it hasn’t been a full week yet, but I think a visit from you might help.”

Gabriel absorbed her words in silence. She could tell he was listening from the minute change in the expression on his face, but other than that, he gave no sign that he had heard her. When he spoke again, it was about something else. “I want you to send a Guardian to fetch Nathaniel once his school is over. I want to talk to him about the other Guardians we are assigning to guard the class.”

Nathalie nodded, and, recognizing the dismissal in his tone, turned to leave the room.

Her eyes fell on the sword leaning against the wall by the door. Adrien’s sword. The one his mother had given him, shortly before she’d vanished. The only sword Adrien had ever owned that didn’t have a name, because without his mother, Adrien hadn’t had the heart to name it.

Nathalie focused herself to look away from the sword, to step out of the room, pushing Adrien from her thoughts. The only way she could help Adrien now was to make sure that his father was successful, and that meant she had to make sure that Marinette Dupain-Cheng's class didn’t become a problem.

And to do that, she needed to find Kagami Tsurugi and Lila Rossi.


	15. The Class' Powers: Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The class begins to learn about their powers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I was writing last chapter and this chapter, I realized that I've been thinking of this story in parts. This part is the origin part, establishing the powers of the class, and establishing Marinette and Adrien as Ladybug and Chat Noir. Well, the reaper versions of Ladybug and Chat Noir.  
> After this part, there's going to be a time skip of a couple of months. And this means that a lot of the class will get way better at learning to use their powers or learning how their powers work between one chapter and the next. And originally, I was just going to tell you that there was a time skip, but then I realized that I was moving through this origins part a lot faster than I had meant to, and that at some point, I was probably going to want to go back and add more stuff into it.  
> So to make that easier, I decided to split this fic into different parts. So when it says that there are only 22 chapters, that's just for the origins part. There's going to be a lot more to this story than that.  
> Also, updating is probably going to be pretty random for a while. I wish I could update more regularly, but I'm getting married in a couple of months, so there's a lot going on right now. But I will try to update as frequently as I can, and once things settle down a little, I'm hoping that I'll be able to update this fic three times a month.

Kim really thought he'd be the first person to show up to the library for the meeting after school. He was almost fifteen minutes early, after all.

But when he got there, Chloe and Sabrina were already there, sitting at one of the tables. Chloe glanced over at him and then looked away quickly. Sabrina was clearly trying not to stare at her, and Kim couldn't blame her. Chloe wasn't herself, her muscles tight with fear, her expressions dark with emotions she was fighting and failing to hide.

Kim slipped into the chair across the table from Chloe and frowned at her. "I thought you said you weren't coming?" He asked, as if he thought he might be remembering wrong.

He wasn't. He knew he wasn't. When they'd discussed where to meet tonight, none of them had wanted to offer their house and risk their parents overhearing their conversation and finding out what was going on. And they wanted to go somewhere they wouldn't be overheard, so they'd asked Principal Damocles if they could use the school library.

He'd said no, of course, since they wouldn't tell him what exactly they wanted it for, but Chloe had saved them. She'd told him it was the first meeting of the official Chloe Bourgeoise fanclub, and then he hadn't dared to say no.

The class had been startled by Chloe's assistance, but she'd played it off by saying that she'd be shopping during that time and had only helped because she'd prefer not to run into them.

Kim had known she was lying, that she was going to come. But he thought she'd come late, pretend that she'd gotten bored and decided to grace them with her presence.

But here she was early, like she just couldn't make herself stay away.

Chloe glanced up at Kim and scowled. "I said no such thing." She looked away from him, trying to resume her normal snobby expression, but she just looked tense. _"You_ must have a bad memory."

Kim had always been able to see through Chloe, had always known the emotions she was bottling up.

But he was used to having to try. But this time, he could see those emotions on her face plain as day. He didn't have to try.  
And the emotions on her face confirmed a suspicion Kim had had for years.

Kim cleared his throat. "So, Chloe..." He started to say, wanting to talk to her before the rest of the class got there and she'd feel the need to get defensive. Well, more defensive.

But he was interrupted by the library door opening, and Nino sauntering in, his headphones on his ears.

He nodded at Kim and took one of the seats next to Kim. "Where's Max?" He asked, his voice too loud.

Kim waited for him to pull the headphones off before he answered. "At home. He said he had this big project he wanted to work on and that he'd meet me here. He'll be here soon though."

Nino nodded understandingly and put his headphones back up.

The four of them sat in silence for a couple of minutes before Alix showed up, sliding into the seat next to Chloe without hesitation, probably to leave the seats next to Kim and Nino open for Max and Alya, respectively.

Chloe shot her a glare, but Alix ignored it. She nodded a greeting at Nino, but pointedly ignored the rest of them.

Juleka and Rose came in shortly afterward and sat next to Alix, followed shortly by Mylene, who sat next to Juleka, and then Ivan, who naturally took the seat across from Mylene.

Max came in only a minute late and at next to Kim, muttering to himself and obviously lost in thought.

"Hey, Max," Kim said, trying to suppress a smile.

Max jerked like he'd been slapped, blinking several times as he came out of his reverie. "Oh. Hi, Kim."

"So are we going to wait for Alya or get started without her?" Alix asked. "Because she's picking up Marinette, so she's going to be late."

Nino pulled his headphones off for the tail end of her comment and frowned. "But if we don't wait for Alya, then one of us has to lead this discussion. I call not it."

There was a quick murmur of "not it's" from the class, as well as several expectant glances at Chloe, but Chloe clearly had no intention of saying anything at all.

Kim looked at Rose hopefully, and several of his classmates followed his lead.

Rose blinked several times. "But I'm a Guardian," she protested. "I don't know how powers work for humans."

Kim sighed. It was starting to look like he had no other choice. He was going to have to speak up, because unlike Rose, he knew exactly how human powers worked.

He stood up, all eyes turning to him. "Look, sometimes when you first develop powers, or in this case when something weird gives you powers, they can be subtle at first, and slowly get more powerful and more dangerous. But you can still figure it out if you know what you're looking for. There are only three ways powers work. First option is when your powers attach to something in your personality, something you're already good at, something you love doing. Second, you can get a power that changes your personality, and then develop a love for something related to that power, and the power will make you absurdly good at it. And third, you can get a power completely unrelated to your personality, maybe even at odds with who you are. In that case, your powers will be more obvious, and more unreliable. They'll flip on and off like a light switch, and you'll probably already have realized that you have them."

He stopped talking, and was greeted by a long moment of silence.

And then Nino spoke, not asking the question that Kim didn't want to answer, but something uncomfortably close to it. "How do you know all that?"

Kim glanced at him and shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. "Having powers has run in my family for generations, of all different kinds. So I know about almost all the types of powers you could have, and I know how to recognize them."

Alix raised her eyebrows at him. "You expect us to believe that you've had powers all this time and you _haven't_ bragged about them?"

That was even closer to the question that he didn't answer.

Kim stiffened, holding his chin high in defiance of the feeling of embarrassment stealing over him. "Like, I said, it's possible to have powers that don't match you. Mine are like that. My power is nothing like me, so it's not a cool power to have." He looked away from her. "It's embarressing. I was hoping to go my whole life without you guys finding out about it," he admitted reluctantly. "But none of you know anything about getting powers and I do, so..."

He trailed off at the expression on Alix's face. She looked like she had just won the lottery.

She leaned forward, her eyes glittering with an evil excitement. "What powers do you have?"

There it was. The question that Kim didn't want to answer.

And just like that, the power that Kim was managing to suppress for once surged inside him, breaking through his control like water with a dam.

And his classmates started to glow, his stomach flipping as all of his senses got slapped with their emotions.

He could see Alix's delight at the embaressment on his face. And beneath that, he could see and feel and _smell_ the fear that she was burying, the fear that told him that Alix had already noticed new and scary abilities and wasn't ready to admit it yet, not even to herself.

Beside her, Chloe was a complicated knot of emotions swarming and feeding into each other, too chaotic and intense for him to identify them, at least with other people with their own emotions around. It was strange to see her like this. Normally, she suppressed any emotions besides smug satisfaction or a flash of anger.

And of course, reading Chloe was made harder by the overwhelming flood of emotion coming off of Mylene. She drowned out all but the most powerful emotions in all of her classmates with her fear. It was worse than normal, but not by too much. So Kim had no idea if she had discovered powers and was scared of them, or if she was scared of what she would get.

Across from her, Ivan's feelings all flowed toward her like a magnet, all of his concern, all of his attention automatically centering on her. Kim's stomach fluttered with butterflies in response, his chest tightening the way Ivan's did when he looked at Mylene.

Kim looked away. Ivan was way too in love with Mylene. It made it annoying to look at them.

So he looked at Alix instead, making his expression as neutral as he possibly could. "I'm an empath. It means I can..." He hesitated. No reason to tell them about how many senses he perceived their emotions with. "Feel the emotions of other people."

He saw several of his classmates flicker with nervousness and couldn't help but smile. "Yes, if you have a crush on someone, I already know. If you're scared of something, I already know. I've had these powers since before I started school, so the whole time I've known you I've known how you felt. And it's really annoying and touchy-feely and ugh..." He shuddered. "I try not to look cause you guys are all so emotional." He glanced sideways at Nino. "Well, not you, usually."

Nino smiled at him, looking totally unbothered by the idea of Kim reading his emotions.

The rest of the class was very bothered by it, a mixture of scared and embarrassed and vulnerable, like he knew they would be, but what surprised him was the fact that the person most bothered by it wasn't Chloe, or Ivan, or Mylene, all of whom had good reasons not to like him seeing their feelings.

No, the strongest feeling of discomfort came from Kim's right.

He turned his head to look at Max, and saw the twisted bundle of discomfort and nervousness and a determination to hide other emotions, to keep something a secret from Kim. A secret that Kim was confident he hadn't had this morning, when he didn't know to hide his emotions.

Kim narrowed his eyes at Max. "You and I are going to talk later," he said quietly.

Max's eyes widened. He looked away from Kim, his shoulders hunching over, but he didn't object.

Alix was the first one to recover from the uncomfortable emotions, the red fading out of her as she opened her mouth to speak. "That sounds like a pretty _adorable_ power, Kim," she said with a faint smile.

He could feel the flicker of amusement from Ivan. Rose and Juleka both giggled out loud.

Kim pouted. "It's not funny."

Alix opened her mouth, eyes glinting wickedly, but then the door opened and Marinette and Alya walked in.

Kim turned around to glare at them. "Seriously? You two couldn't have come here three seconds faster? Alya could have taken over and talked inccessantly about powers, and I could have kept my mouth shut, but no. You guys wait until after I tell everyone how powers work and what mine are before you come!"

Marinette stared at him, looking like she had no idea what he was talking about, but Alya only looked surprised for a second. "You're one of the people who have powers? So then it's you, and Marinette, and Chloe..."

The entire class turned to stare at Chloe, who looked like someone had just pointed a gun at her.

Alya didn't notice, didn't seem to even realize what she'd said, rattling on. "And whoever the person is who has powers and never realized it."

Kim could feel the heat coming off Chloe, the anger and discomfort and fear. She wasn't ready to talk about her powers yet, and the rest of the class was dying to talk to her about them.

Fortunately, Kim had the perfect distraction.

He met Alya's eyes and held one hand out, and pointed his fingers down at Nino."That would be this genius."

Alya stared at him, looking clueless, like she didn't know what he was talking about, so Kim elaborated.

"He's the other person who has powers. You really never noticed?"


	16. The Class' Powers: Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The class continues learning about their powers.

Nino stared up at Kim, completely in the dark. “Wait, what?” 

Kim gave Nino an annoyed look. “Powers as strong as yours, and you seriously never noticed them at all?” He looked up at Alya, and then at Rose. “Neither of you noticed either? I’m sure you’ve seen him use them dozens of times.” 

Rose shrugged. 

Alya frowned. “I haven’t seen Nino use powers.” 

“That’s because I don’t have powers,” Nino said, a hundred percent sure of himself. Then Kim glanced over at him, his expression completely unimpressed, and suddenly Nino was only one percent sure of himself. “I don’t think.” 

Kim rolled his eyes. “See, this is what happens when your powers get linked to a hobby. It makes it hard to notice what your powers are. Like Nino doesn’t know what his powers are, because they’re linked to his music.” 

Nino blinked. "What? My music isn’t magical.” 

Kim sighed. “No? Tell me something, Nino, has anyone ever managed to  _not_  dance to it for more than a minute?” 

Nino thought about that for a second. “But that’s just because it’s catchy.” 

Kim looked like he wanted to die. “No, it’s not! It’s because you’re a piper. As in a pied piper? You know, the guy with the flute and the rats? Except instead of making people follow you, you make people dance.” 

Nino just stared at Kim. Kim did seem to know more about this than he did, but Nino was pretty sure he would have noticed if his music was magic. 

“Well, that’s a terrifying ability,” Alix drawled sarcastically. Nino turned to look at her, but she was already looking at Chloe. “So what can you do?” 

Kim cut in before Chloe had a chance to answer. “Actually, Alix, it is terrifying. You know why?” He met Nino’s eyes. “When you play music for people, what do you want their response to be?” 

“I want them to be happy,” Nino said, frowning. “I want my music to make them happy. And I want them to... dance.” He spoke more slowly as the realization dawned on him, the realization that Kim vocalized a moment later. 

“You see?” Kim said. “He wants you to dance, so you dance. And you don’t even realize that he’s making you dance, because you think you’re dancing because you’re happy, and you don’t realize that he’s making you happy.” 

He paused, like he was waiting for some dramatic reaction, but the rest of the class mostly just looked confused. 

Mylene voiced the thoughts they all seemed to have. “So he makes people happy?” She tilted her head in confusion. “Isn’t that a good thing? I don’t understand why you say it’s scary.” 

 Nino couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had just plunged him into a bucket of ice. How could they not get it? 

Kim shook his head. “He made you happy and he made you dance. That’s perfect emotional and physical control right there, and he wasn’t even trying. He did it on accident, without any knowledge or control of his powers, and people can’t even resist him for a whole minute. So it’s not scary because he made you happy, and it’s not scary that he made you dance. What’s scary is the fact that his powers allow him to make you do whatever he wants you to do, and feel whatever he wants you to feel, and you’d be lucky if you could fight him for a minute if you didn’t want to do it. The simple fact is, I don’t even know what abilities most of you have gotten, and I’m still willing to bet that _Nino’s_ are way more terrifying.” 

Nino watched the comprehension dawn on his classmates’ faces, watch their eyes widen with the horrifying understanding, watch their gazes shift to him with varying levels of wariness on their faces. He tried to think of a way to tell them he wasn’t dangerous, but the words died on his tongue before he could even start to say them. 

So even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she looked like, Nino turned around in his seat, his eyes going to Marinette, before he finally made himself look at Alya. 

Marinette mostly just looked surprised, but as he watched, he saw her expression shift from “how can that be true” to “actually, that kind of explains some things.” She still didn’t look scared, but he couldn’t stand to wait to see if her expression shifted to fear. 

He looked at Alya instead, dreading what he was about to see on her face. 

But Alya didn’t look afraid. Instead, the look on her face had Nino’s insides twisting with fear, because Alya’s expression could only be described with one word. 

Predatory. 

Alya looked at him like she’d just found her next meal, or as was probably more accurate, her next blog post. He could practically see her plotting a way to get him to agree to let her post about his powers, and he hoped he was right about that, because if he was wrong, then she had some other use for his powers on her mind, and Nino was terrified to think about what it might be. 

“Or at least, Nino’s powers would be the most terrifying,” Kim said, snapping Nino out of his thoughts. His voice was much lighter now than it had been a moment ago. “If he wasn’t both a sweetheart, and kind of an idiot.” 

“Hey!” Nino protested, and suddenly Marinette burst into laughter. 

He looked at her startled, and then slowly, his other classmates started to join her. 

Kim’s eyes scanned his classmates like he was looking for something. Then he sank into his seat, looking satisfied.  

Alya took a seat next to Nino, Marinette slipping into the seat next to her. 

Nino glanced at Alya, one thing still bugging him. He knew he’d played music for her on some of their dates. Had he done that on the first one? Had he done that the first time she’d kissed him? Had she only done that because he had wanted her to? Had he made her kiss him? 

Alya turned to look at Nino, a soft smile on her lips as she met his eyes. Hers were no longer predatory, but they were so soft and so warm they were liquid gold as they held his. She studied his face for a second, and then she shook her head slightly. “You didn’t,” she said under her breath. 

Nino didn’t know how she’d known what he’d been thinking, but he smiled gratefully at her, and she took his hand under the table. 

Kim started talking again. “So anyway. As I was telling them, I’m an empath. I feel other people’s emotions.” 

Alya opened her mouth. 

Kim cut her off. “Yeah, I know, it’s an adorable ability,” he said, his eyes flicking briefly to Alix. “And I’m sure you have a million questions, but right now, we’re trying to figure out what powers everyone has.” He glanced sideways, but then shifted his gaze to the ceiling before Nino could figure out who he had been looking at. “Especially since I can tell from your emotions that some of you have already noticed your powers, and don’t want to share them, which is a terrible plan.” 

Alya frowned. “Yeah, no kidding. Nathalie said we could get people killed. We need to know what we’re dealing with so that we can help each other.” 

Juleka mumbled something under her breath that none of them could understand. 

“What was that?” Alya asked, looking at Rose. 

Rose smiled. “Oh, Juleka says that in the last week she’s developed an obsession with horror movies involving with ghosts.” 

The whole class stared at her. 

“Wasn’t she already obsessed with horror movies about monsters?” Alix asked. 

Juleka whispered something else to Rose. 

“No, that was monsters,” Rose said cheerfully. “The obsession with ghosts is new. She’s been obsessed with mirrors, too, and she thinks it’s because of the legends that you can see ghosts in mirrors sometimes.” Juleka whispered something else. “And also, she’s pretty sure that she did see a ghost in the mirror yesterday.” 

Several people gasped. 

Kim yelped loudly in surprise. “Are you kidding? You saw a ghost and you didn’t  _start_  with that?” 

Juleka shrugged. 

Alya stared at her disbelievingly for a minute. “Okay. Anyone else have any crazy experiences they want to share?” 

There was a long moment of silence from the class. Mylene and Ivan shook their heads, but the rest of the class didn’t respond at all. 

Kim looked at Marinette. “You had powers too, right? Maybe you can explain how they work more than I did. I told them the way that powers usually trigger, either by springing from a pre-existing hobby, or creating a hobby, or by being completely random.” He looked back at Marinette. “Anything else you want to add?” 

Marinette was silent for a moment, looking terrified. Then she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, her expression was still. “Just one thing. No matter how much you ignore your powers, they’re not going to go away. You can’t get rid of them by pretending you don’t have them, or lying to other people about them. So if you know, and you’re not sharing because you’re hoping they’ll somehow go away, or you’ll somehow be wrong about them if you don’t say anything, it won’t happen. It’s only going to get worse.” 

There was another moment of silence following Marinette’s words, before Sabrina spoke up. 

“Well, um...” she paused, and cleared her throat. “Stuff like this keeps happening to me.” 

She held up her hand. Or her arm, really. Her hand seemed to have disappeared. 

Nino would have thought it had detached from her or something, but her wrist was looking pretty translucent, which made it pretty obvious it was something else. 

“Are you turning invisible?” Alya asked, her eyes going wide. 

Sabrina sighed sadly, closing her eyes. “Yesterday my head disappeared. I got surprised and screamed really loudly, and my dad came running into my room, and I had to throw a towel over my head to avoid giving him a heart attack. Now my hand’s invisible. I can still use it, but... It’s really weird,” she wailed suddenly, and burst into tears. 

Everyone stared at her, unsure what to do. Everyone but Chloe, that was, who was still staring at the wall on the opposite side of the library with intense concentration. 

Alix raised her hand and patted Sabrina awkwardly on the shoulder. “Um... there, there.” Then she let her hand fall back down and looked at the rest of the class. “I suppose I should mention that I had a dream about Sabrina turning invisible last night. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now...” her voice trailed off. 

“Now it looks like you might be seeing the future,” Alya finished for her. 

“That’s amazing,” Marinette said. 

Kim frowned. “It’s also incredibly unlikely. Powers involving the future are extremely rare. But Sabrina did say she was already turning invisible yesterday, so Alix might have just seen something that was already happening, just far away from her. That’s a more normal power.” 

Alix shrugged, looking unconcerned. 

“It’s still cool,” Alya said leaning forward and putting her head on her hands. She looked like she was in heaven. “Anyone else have any cool powers?” 

Ivan and Mylene both shook their heads again.  

Kim looked at Alya. “What about you? Do you have any powers?” 

Alya smiled. “Are you kidding? If I knew what my powers were, that would have been the first words out of my mouth. What about you, Max?” 

Max shook his head emphatically, and everyone looked away from him again. 

Everyone but Kim, Nino noticed. Kim’s eyes stayed on Max, a disapproving frown on his face, and Max looked away uncomfortably. 

Which made Nino think that Max had noticed his powers, and Kim could tell that from his emotions, but didn’t want to rat out his friend. 

“What about Chloe?” Mylene asked. “Alya said she already had powers, right?”   
Everyone looked at Alya, who looked slightly startled. “I said that out loud?” She looked at Chloe. “Well, it’s true. You were already a herald, right?” 

Chloe didn’t answer her, keeping her eyes on the wall. 

Alya kept going. “You could always see Rose and Nathaniel, couldn’t you? That’s why you backed Marinette up when she told us to get out of the classroom. She knew we had to go because of the reapers. You knew because of the Guardians. Didn’t you?” 

Chloe huffed angrily. “Yeah, alright, fine. I’ve been able to see the Guardians since I was a toddler.” She paused for just a second. “But it’s not the powers I’ve had from before the light that you should be worried about. It’s the fact that since the light, my powers have changed.” 

Kim’s eyes went as round as saucers. “What? Are you serious, Chloe?” 

Chloe ignored him. “And I’m not the only one.” Her eyes locked on Marinette like a cat watching a bird. “Am I, Marinette?” 

The color drained out of Marinette’s face. “I... I... I don’t know what you’re talking a- about.” 

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Oh please.” 

Then, quite unexpectedly, she launched herself up onto the table, half crawling, half stumbling over to Marinette. She pulled something out of her pocket and before anyone could react, stabbed Marinette’s hand with it. 

Marinette yelped in surprise and pain as Chloe pulled her hand away, revealing a thumb tack sticking out of Marinette’s hand. 

Chloe stood up and walked back across the table to her seat as Marinette pulled the thumb tack out of her hand, blood dripping down her hand. 

But even as Nino watched, the blood stopped dripping down and flowed the other way, back into Marinette’s hand and disappearing, leaving Marinette’s hand completely uninjured. 

Several people gasped in surprise. Nino might have been one of them. He really couldn’t be sure. 

“I told you,” Chloe said in a bored tone as she sat back in her seat. 

The only one who didn’t look surprised by Marinette’s hand healing was Alya, who was too busy glaring at Chloe, the anger slowly welling up inside her until suddenly, she was yelling. 

“What the freak, Chloe?! Powers or not, you can’t just go around stabbing people!”


	17. My Name is Adrien Agreste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien goes to school for the first time in his life.

Adrien stared at Nathalie for so long he thought his eyes were going to dry out and possibly fall out of his head. He had to be hearing things. "My father wants me to... Do what?"

Nathalie's expression didn't change. "Your father has decided that it would be a good idea for you to go to school," she said again.

Adrien's jaw dropped. He hadn't been hearing things. How was that possible? "My father is requesting that I... Go outside?" His brain struggled to process those words.

Nathalie didn't appear to have any idea that she was saying anything strange. "Yes. Of course, he expects your body guard to give you a ride to school and to pick you up everyday. He expects you to have very good grades. And you will memorize the backstory he has prepared for you before you go to school for the first time."

Adrien pinched his arm. It hurt. "But my father wants me to leave the house?"

If Nathalie had been any less professional, she probably would have sighed. Instead, she remained completely neutral. "Yes."

Adrien tried to stay as neutral as she was, but neutral had never been his thing. He felt a grin start to spread across his face as the excitement started to bubble up inside him. "He's going to let me leave the house and go to school with people my own age? Everyday?"

Nathalie nodded slightly. "Yes. Of course, there is something he was hoping you could do for him at school."

Adrien blinked. His father needed him to do something? Something other than keep himself safe and look like the perfect son? That was a new one. "Father... Needs my help?"

Nathalie's lips pressed together ever so slightly. A small change, but one that Adrien knew meant something important. He just didn't know what. "Yes," she said, her voice a little too calm, a little too composed. "The light of the Other World seems to have... changed a class somehow. They're different now. Not exactly normal humans. Your father is worried that they might be dangerous, but they don't trust Guardians, so we're worried that the ones we've assigned to the class won't be able to gain their trust. We need someone to get close to them, gain their trust. Keep tabs on them and report back to the General. If you are willing to be our inside man, your father will allow you to attend their class."

Little alarm bells started going off in Adrien's head. There wasn't really anything wrong with what Nathalie was asking him to do. If an entire class found themselves suddenly changed, then keeping an eye on them was for their own good. But Nathalie was wording it like she was asking him to infiltrate and spy on them, so she must have thought that at some point, he'd have to betray them. And that meant that they'd already decided that at least one of the people in the class was their enemy, and they were making sure that Adrien knew it.

Adrien didn't like that. He hated the idea of making friends, real friends for the first time, knowing that he'd be lying to at least one of them, guaranteed to betray one of them, and not sure which one that was.

But if he said no, he'd be trapped here. And he couldn't live with that.

And his father knew it.

Adrien sighed heavily. "Alright. I'll keep an eye on them."

Nathalie nodded. "Good." She held out a file to Adrien. "This is your backstory. You'll have to memorize it before you're allowed to attend class."

Adrien blinked in surprise as he took the file from her. Memorize it? Oh, right. She didn't know he was only human-ish. Plagg said he should keep that a secret, so he'd have to play along. "O... Okay."

She handed him a piece of paper next. "This is a list of your classmates. They're numbered, in order of how much a threat we're worried they might present to the city."

Adrien took the list from her and made a show of reading it. "Number one, Marinette Dupain-Cheng," he read. "She's the harbinger who went inside the classroom, right?"

Nathalie nodded. "She said nothing about her changed other than an increased ability to heal, but we're concerned that she might be mistaken or even lying, after how much you changed. If she's mistaken, then we need to make sure someone is there to help her when she realizes she's wrong. If she's lying..." Nathalie caught herself off. "Regardless, she needs someone looking out for her."

Adrien nodded and scanned the list. The rest of the names didn't mean a whole lot to him, except one. "Chloe Bourgeois is on the bottom."

Nathalie nodded again. "We're fairly certain we already know what Chloe's new ability is, and unless we've gravely misunderstood it, it's nothing to be worried about."

Adrien nodded, a little relieved. Chloe was the only friend he'd ever really had. He didn't want to have to turn on her. "Okay. I'll make sure to keep a closer eye on the rest of them, then."

Nathalie nodded. "Let me know when you have the file memorized and are able to start school."

"I'll memorize it by tomorrow morning," Adrien said.

Nathalie frowned. Well, her expression didn't really change, but he knew her well enough to read the expression in her eyes. "That seems fast."

Was that fast? Adrien had no idea how long it was supposed to take to memorize things. "I have a few hours before I need to go to bed. I think that should be enough time."

Nathalie nodded slightly. "Fine. I'll come quiz you in the morning. If you can answer all the questions, you can start school tomorrow."

Adrien's heart started hammering. He could go to school tomorrow. He could talk to people his own age, people who weren't too afraid of his father to talk to him like a person.

He couldn't believe that he was finally getting out of this house.

 

"I still don't understand why you want to go to school. Why not just stay here and sleep all day?"

Adrien sent Plagg an annoyed look. "I don't understand how you can live for so many centuries and not get bored of sleeping."

Plagg sent him an offended look. "What kind of person would get bored of sleeping?"

"Anyone but you, Plagg," Adrien retorted without pausing. "Now be quiet. I'm trying to decide how I should introduce myself tomorrow. Should I say something funny? Should I pretend I've had lots of friends?"

Plagg shrugged and floated over to Adrien's bed to flop down on it. "Who cares?"

"I do. I've never had friends before, Plagg, except Chloe. This is my chance to have more friends. I don't want to blow it."

Plagg shrugged again. "The best way to make friends is to fit in. Be like them. A normal human, and all that boring stuff."

Adrien frowned. "But they aren't normal. They all have powers now." He frowned. "Hang on a second. If they all have powers, then I'm going to stick out. And they probably won't want to talk to me about their powers, and then my dad will pull me out of school again."

Plagg didn't answer. Adrien was pretty sure he'd fallen asleep.

Adrien kept talking aloud anyway. "If I want to fit in, I have to tell them I have a power. But if my dad finds out I still have some of my abilities... Of course, he should know by now anyway. That's his power. He can find anything, find out anything." He looked at Plagg. "He's going to find out I still have Guardian abilities."

Plagg answered him without opening his eyes. "I already told you. Your dad's ability won't work on me, and since the light sealed us together, we now share powers. So your dad isn't going to find out you still have powers, not unless you tell him. But if you tell the class you have abilities, he might find out. I mean, he could just ask the other Guardians how you're doing and they'd tell him, right?"

Adrien frowned. "My dad can't acknowledge that I'm his son now that I'm human. He'd never risk asking them about me. He'll probably just have Nathalie keep tabs on me, and she's too busy to keep talking to the class personally."

"Well then, tell them you have powers," Plagg said, yawning. "Which power are you going to admit to having?"

Adrien thought for a moment. "There are Guardians watching the class, so if they find out that I'm stronger and faster than a normal human they might figure it out. There's only one power I can admit to having."

"You're going to get yourself labeled a huge nerd," Plagg warned him.

Adrien rolled his eyes. "Yeah, cause that's the worse thing that could happen to me while I'm pretending to be human for the first time."

Plagg didn't answer. Adrien didn't care. He was going to school tomorrow.

It was going to be amazing.

He just had to make sure that Marinette Dupain-Cheng liked him, since she was the number one person he had to keep tabs on.

But really, how hard could that be? Marinette had seemed like a sweetheart art the one time he’d met her.

So making friends with her would probably be tons of fun.

 

Adrien took a deep breath and smiled nervously at his classmates. “Hi. My name is Adrien Agreste. I’m new to this school. I’m very pleased to meet you.”

His new classmates looked at him with expressions ranging from to distrust to boredom to friendly smiles.

And then of course, there was Marinette Dupain-Cheng, who was glaring at him with eyes full of a seething, unending hatred that made Adrien want to dig a hole in the ground and hide in it.

Yeah, making friends with her was going to be tons of fun.

Like taking a bath in acid.


	18. And Mine is None of Your Business

Marinette grabbed her bag and sprinted out the door. It was her first day back to school, and she was was absolutely not going to be late.

She reached the corner and waited for the light to turn, and that was when she saw him.

He was tall, with blond hair, green eyes, and a sweet but nervous smiled.

He was surrounded by a group of students. Several of the students were trying to get him to sign pieces of paper, and all of the students were girls.

Marinette frowned. They were acting like he was famous, but she didn't recognize him.

Well, he did seem... Sort of familiar. But she couldn't figure out why.

The light changed and Marinette walked across the street, and was almost immediately ambushed by Alya.

"Girl! It's so good to see you again. It's been forever!"

Marinette laughed. "You just saw me yesterday."

Alya shook her head. "No, I mean it's been forever since you've come to school."

"That's true." Marinette glanced over at the blond boy. "Who's the new kid?"

Alya followed her gaze and frowned. "I don't know. This is the first time I've seen him."

Marinette chewed her lip. "I feel like I've seen him somewhere before."

Alya grinned at her. "In your dreams, maybe?"

Marinette blinked and looked over at Alya. "What?"

Alya shrugged. "The way you were looking at him made me think that maybe you meant you'd seen him in your dreams."

Marinette pouted. "That's not what I meant."

Alya laughed. "I'm just kidding, Marinette." She bumped Marinette's shoulder lightly." You're so easy to tease."

Marinette opened her mouth to respond, but Alya didn't give her a chance to say any comebacks. She grabbed Marinette's  and pulled her in the direction of the blond boy.

She inserted herself in between the boy and the people surrounding him, dragging Marinette with her. "Hi! I'm Alya." She pulled Marinette in front of her. "And this is my friend. She's awesome."

Marinette felt herself go red.

The boy looked startled for a second, but then he smiled. "Nice to meet you. My name is Adrien Agreste. Nice to meet you." He held out a hand for her to shake. "And your name is?"

Marinette blinked several more times. "Oh, right. Um, my name is..."

"Adrikins!"

Marinette flinched at the all too recognizable voice. She jerked her hand back right before her fingers touched Adrien's.

She didn't want to, but it was like driving past a bad car crash. She found her head turning involuntarily.

Chloe came sauntering over like she owned the school. Like she owned Paris. She put her on her biggest smile and wrapped her arms around "Adrikins," planting an enthusiastic kiss on his cheek. "I can't believe you're here!" She glanced at the girls surrounding him, her face unreadable. "What are they doing?"

Adrien glanced at the girls and shifted slightly, like he was uncomfortable. "Um... They want my autograph. You know, because I'm a... supermodel, over in New York, working for my dad's huge fashion company."

Marinette frowned. "Your dad is a fashion designer?"

He nodded, rubbing his hand over the back of his head. "Uh, yeah. He's pretty famous. But not here. In New York, mostly."

Alya glanced over at Marinette, a very expressive look on her face. A "that explains why he looks familiar to you" expression.

But it didn't.

It didn't explain why he looked familiar to Marinette.

Because he was lying.

Marinette met his eyes. "Well, that's strange. I was pretty sure I knew all the famous designers in New York. It's weird that I've never heard of him or seen his work. Never seen a picture of you, either. Not in all the New York fashion magazines I've read."

Adrien's eyes went wide. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

Chloe rolled her eyes. "Oh please. Anyone could take one look at your outfit and tell that you don't know a thing about fashion. You've probably never read a fashion magazine in your whole life, and that's why you don't recognize Adrien."

A couple of the girls surrounding them giggled uncertainly, like they didn't really find it funny but they were worried they'd offend Chloe if they didn't laugh.

"What? No, Chloe, I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding." Adrien said.

Marinette's hands balled into fists. "I've read every important fashion magazine I could get my hands on, including a lot from New York. He's never been in one. He's lying."

Alya glanced from Marinette to Adrien, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. The other girls mostly looked confused.

Chloe released Adrien and stepped closer to Marinette, her eyes narrowing, cold and glittering and furious. "I've known Adrien my whole life. He would never lie. Clearly, you're the one that's lying."

Marinette's teeth gritted. "I'm not a liar."

"Yeah, Marinette wouldn't lie," Alya snapped, enough anger in her voice to stop a rhino in it's tracks.

But Chloe wasn't a rhino. She glared right back at Alya, opening her mouth like she was about to unleash a hailstorm of insults at them.

"Whoa. Look, I'm sure no one's lying." Adrien put a hand on Chloe's shoulder, like he was trying to hold her back. "Let's just drop this, okay?" He smiled weakly and looked at Marinette. "You were going to tell me what your name is."

Marinette glared at him. "None of your business."

She moved to walk past both of them, but Chloe got in her way, shrugging off Adrien's hand.  "He's not lying." She glanced back at Adrien. "What was the last magazine issue you modelled your dad's clothes in?"

Adrien opened his mouth, looking extremely uncomfortable.

"He's in this one," a girl said before Adrien could say anything, holding up an open magazine.

Alya grabbed it out of her hands and looked at the page. A photo of Adrien, wearing an outfit with a fashion logo Marinette had never seen before.

Alya flipped a page to show more pictures of Adrien, more outfits Marinette had never seen before. They weren't bad, but if Marinette didn't know them, they weren't made by a famous designer.

Marinette pushed Alya's hands up so she could see the front cover of the magazine.

Chloe smirked at her. "Whose the liar now, Marinette?"

Marinette glared at her. "He is. I read that issue. Twice. Those pictures weren't there."

Adrien smiled nervously at her. "Maybe you missed them?"

Alya snorted, still flipping through the magazine. "This is an awful lot of pictures to miss. One of you has to be lying. And since it's not Marinette, it must be you."

The girls all turned to look at Adrien.

He looked pale, and he looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn't say anything.

Chloe looked like she was about to detonate and take out several city blocks, or possibly all of Paris. "So, what? You think that someone went through all the magazines in Paris and inserted a bunch of pages into them to make it look like Adrien has been modelling for years? Are you insane? That's utterly ridiculous."

Adrien laughed. The laugh sounded hollow, and the strangest expression crossed his face. "Yeah, why would anyone plant pictures in magazines to make me look famous when I could just be a normal person?"

Marinette squinted at him. Something was definitely off here. He wasn't behaving at all the way she'd expect a liar to behave, and yet he was still lying. "I don't know how he did it, but he has to be lying."

"Or you are," Chloe snapped.

Adrien glanced at the girls around them. They were all staring at Adrien, like they were waiting for him to weigh in. Like his word was the only one that mattered.

He glanced back at Marinette, and she saw something flicker in his eyes. Something... almost like resignation. Like he was about to do something he would have given almost anything not to have to do. "I... I'm telling the truth. So either you don't know as much about fashion as you think you do, or you're lying."

Marinette opened her mouth to protest, but Chloe cut her off. "Just look at her outfit. Clearly, she knows nothing about fashion."

Marinette scowled. "I know tons about fashion!"

Adrien's lips tightened. "Then I guess that makes you a...." He hesitated for a second before he finished the sentence. "Liar."

The girls surrounding them started whispering to themselves. Marinette couldn't hear what they were saying. Largely because of the way her blood was roaring in her ears.

Marinette growled loudly and stepped forward, pushing Chloe unceremoniously out of the way.

"Hey!" Chloe objected.

Marinette ignored her. She stepped up to Adrien and glared up at him. "I don't care what you say. I know you're lying about who are you, and I will prove it, because unlike you, I don't lie. So don't you ever, ever, call me a liar again."

A hand touched her arm, and Marinette turned her head to find herself looking at Alya. "He's not worth it, Marinette. Let's just go."

Marinette glared at Adrien for a second longer, but then she let Alya pull her away.

"Geez, that guy's a jerk," Alya said. "If you want help proving that he's lying about being a supermodel, I'll totally help you."

Marinette shook her head. "He's Chloe's friend. He's not worth the effort. With any luck, he'll be in a class far away from us and we'll never see him."

 

"Hi. My name is Adrien Agreste. I'm new to this school. I'm very pleased to meet."

"He's in our class," Alya said, as if Marinette might not have noticed that. "Of course he is."

Marinette scowled at Adrien, furious that he'd had the gall to be in her class.

Adrien's eyes swept the classroom. When he got to Marinette, he flinched.

Good. He should be scared. She was going to expose him for the liar he was, and show the whole class who he really was.

"We're happy to have you Adrien," Ms. Bustier said. "If you'd like to take a seat next to Nino..." She waved a hand at the seat next to Nino, the seat in front Marinette.

Great. Just what she needed. Liar boy sitting in front of her so that when his pants caught fire, she could catch fire too.

"Um, actually," Adrien said hesitantly, looking pretty unsure of himself. "I didn't just move here, or anything. I asked if I could come to your class specifically."

Ms. Bustier looked startled.

Chloe beamed. "Because of your friendship with me, right?"

Marinette rolled her eyes. Of course Chloe would be proud of her friendship with a liar.

Adrien shook his head. "Sorry, Chloe. But no. I asked to come here because after the incident with the light, I started being able to see more than just the Reapers. I could also see the Guardians."

Marinette blinked, surprised.

She wasn't the only one. The whole class seemed stunned.

Adrien kept talking. "And then this one Guardian came to my house. Nathalie. She came to tell me that there was a whole class full of people who had developed superpowers because of the light. Just like I did."

The whole class was even more surprised by that.

Kim was the one to break the silence. "So if you have powers, what are they?"

Adrien smiled. He looked at Nino. "Can I borrow one of your textbooks?"

Nino looked taken aback, but he held it out to Adrien.

Adrien took the textbook, and then promptly hit himself in the head with it.

Nino yelped in surprise. Several other of Marinette's classmates gasped.

Adrien handed the textbook back to Nino. "Open it up. Tell me a page and a paragraph number."

Nino frowned, but opened the book. "Uh... Page 93, paragraph 2?"

Adrien smiled. "You picked a long one." He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and started talking.

It took a second for Marinette to realize what he was saying. Then she flipped open her own book, scanning the words that Adrien was reciting. Perfectly.

Nino stared at the book and then looked back up at Adrien. "What did you do? Memorize the whole book?"

Adrien tilted his head like he was considering the question. "Not really memorized. More like... downloaded. All the information in that textbook is now in my brain. But I didn't just memorize all the words. I know how to apply it, too. If you gave me a book about rocket science, I wouldn't just know all the words in the book. I'd know what they meant. I'd know how to build a rocket ship. I could also do it if you let me touch all the parts of a spaceship. When I touch something, I know what it's made of, what it's for, how it works."

Kim squinted at him, suspicion written all over his face. "So what happens if you touch a person?"

Adrien met Kim's eyes. He didn't seem bothered by the suspicion. "Their clothes or their skin? If I touch their clothes, I could only tell you what those clothes are made of. If I touched them directly, then... It depends on how long I touched them. If I just brushed their skin, I can only tell things they'd tell me themselves in a casual conversation. Things they'd want to keep themselves, I'd need more time, and I'd need to focus. I don't do that," Adrien added quickly. "That would be an invasion of privacy." He frowned. "Actually, the easiest thing to learn about someone is their powers."

"Their powers?" Kim asked. "What do you mean?"

Adrien shrugged. "What powers you have, how they work, how you could control them, how someone else could stop them. Just a quick touch, and I could know everything about your powers."

Marinette's blood ran cold.

Tikki had told her to keep their connection a secret. No matter what.

And all he had to do was touch her, and he'd know.

The liar.

Chloe's friend.

He'd know.

And Marinette found it impossible to believe that he wouldn't use that knowledge against her.

She could never let him touch her.


	19. Paris Has Fallen Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ivan finds out how dangerous his powers are in an unpleasant way.

_When Ivan opened his eyes, Paris was burning._

_He struggled to sit up. His whole body hurt. Considering what he'd just done, that wasn't surprising._

_His head pulsed as he sat up, and he put one hand up to it. His fingers touched something wet and sticky, and he pulled his hand away._

_He hadn't realized he was bleeding._

_No wonder he had a headache._

_He looked up, away from the blood on his fingers, at the city of Paris._

_Which was on fire._

_Not just on fire. It was also broken. Most of the buildings had been partially or completely turned to rubble._

_Ivan tried really, really hard not to think about how many people had been in those buildings when they had come down._

_He tried to stand, but he collapsed the second he got even just a little off the ground. It jolted his body, and it was all Ivan could do to just not lose his lunch everywhere._

_Somewhere close by, he heard something roar, and something else hiss in answer._

_Animals didn't sound like that, so fercious and loud and intelligent._

_It was monsters. Drawing closer to him._

_Making sure he couldn't cut off their way to bring their friends into this world._

_And he couldn't even stand up._

_He took a deep breath and reached inside himself, trying to find the power he'd had earlier, but it was gone._

_He was alone, and there was nothing he could do._

_He heard the hissing again, and closed his eyes._

_Whatever monster was coming at him, he didn't want to see it._

_Even with his eyes closed, he could tell the monsters were getting closer. He could hear the footsteps, too heavy to be human, and the sound of something huge dragging its body over the ground._

_And then he heard a thump, and the sound of something heavy hitting the ground._

_He opened his eyes to see a large, snake like creature on the ground in front of him, having apparently just been knocked over._

_And standing in front of the creature was Alix, panting hard, holding one of her roller blades in both of her hands like it was a club._

_The other monster, a large, lion/ hippo like hybrid, shook off the surprise that had apparently frozen it in place and charged at her._

_Alix gave it a bored look, and then, for no apparent reason, the creature fell over, right on top of its companion._

_The snake made a shrieking sound, but the lion had seemingly been knocked unconscious, and didn't move. The snake struggled underneath it, but couldn't get free._

_Alix looked at it with what could only be pity. "Don't bother. You're not going to be able to get up until your fishy friend shows up. You're just wasting your energy."_

_The snake made another shrieking noise._

_Alix rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah. That's what they all say."_

_Ivan blinked. "You can understand it?"_

_Alix shook her head. "Nah. I've had over a dozen dreams about this. In one of them, Alya was with me and she translated. This time, Sabrina is the one with me."_

_"This time?" Ivan asked._

_Alix nodded. "This dream."_

_And just like that, it hit Ivan like a ton of bricks. Something he should have realized earlier._

_Alix's eyes were glowing._

_And there was only one reason for that._

_"This is a dream," Ivan said. " You're showing me the future."_

_"One future," Alix said. She walked toward him. "I've seen a dozen versions of this, and they're all varying degrees of awful. This one's not nearly as bad as the last one."_

_Ivan glanced around, looking at the destroyed buildings and the plumes of smoke. He heard more roars, more sounds of monsters attacking Paris. "This isn't the worst one?"_

_"Not even close," Alix said. "You can still tell where Paris used to be in this one."_

_Ivan's blood ran cold._

_Alix knelt down on the ground in front of him. "Listen closely, Ivan. The things that happened in this dream, they're unavoidable. No matter what you do, no matter what choices you make, this will happen one day."_

_Ivan grimaced. "Oh, good. Thanks, Alix. Guess I'll give up hope now."_

_Alix shook her head. "No. It's not hopeless. One day, you and Mylene will try to destroy the city. You can't stop that. No matter how many right choices you make, one day you'll make the wrong one, and your powers and Mylene's will try to tear Paris apart. But how successful you are at that depends on what day that is. Which brings me to the important part. Whatever you do, the day you and Mylene try to destroy it, don't let it be tomorrow. Whatever else happens, whenever it happens, it can't be tomorrow."_

_"Tomorrow?" Ivan frowned. "You mean when I wake up from this dream?"_

_Alix nodded. "Tomorrow, there's going to be a new kid with powers of his own. His name is Adrien. He'll tell the class what he can do, and the class will doubt him. But you can't. You have to believe him. It's our only chance. It's Paris' only chance. If this happens tomorrow, by the time they figure out how to do their jobs, there won't be anything left of Paris to save."_

_Ivan stared up into Alix's glowing eyes. He'd never seen her so intense before._

_He nodded. "Okay. I promise. I'll make sure that whatever happens, I'll make sure this day isn't tomorrow."_

_Alix's shoulders slumped as tension drained out of them._

_"Hey," Ivan said, a thought niggling at his mind. "The last dream you had, the one where there was no Paris. That was the one where this happened tomorrow, right? Why not show me that dream? Wouldn't that be a better warning?"_

_Alix's eyes grew sad. "I wouldn't have been able to show you much in that dream. You died pretty early in it. I can't talk to someone in a future where they're already dead."_

_Ivan's eyes went wide. "I die? If it happens tomorrow?"_

_Alix looked away. "If it makes you feel any better, you lasted longer than either Kim or Chloe did."_

_That did not make Ivan feel better._

_Because if he had died, then the only way to stop Mylene would be to kill her too._

_He wanted to ask Alix more. To make her tell him more about how to prevent a future in which there was no Paris and no hope for Mylene._

_But he didn't get a chance._

The dream shattered around him as a ringing filled his ears.

Ivan's eyes flew open.

His alarm was going off.

He sat up in bed, panting hard. He raised his hand to his head. It came away free of blood.

Ivan stood up and went to his window. He opened the curtains and looked out, at a peaceful, sleeping Paris.

He sank down onto the floor and breathed in deeply.

It had been a dream.

Just a dream.

Everything was fine.

He was fine.

As strange and vivid as it had been, it was nothing but a dream. Paris was safe.

Mylene was safe.

Ivan shook his head hard, pushing all thoughts of the dream out of his mind.

 

 

"Hi. My name is Adrien Agreste."

The blond kid kept talking, but Ivan didn't hear a word after that.

_There's going to be a new kid. His name is Adrien._

But that had just been a dream.

How could Alix have been right?

She had just been a figure in a dream.

Ivan turned his head and looked at Alix. She was staring at Adrien with a bored expression.

His mind flashed back to the meeting they'd held in the library. To Sabrina holding up her arm, her hand having vanished.

_I suppose I should mention that I had a dream about Sabrina turning invisible last night._

He hadn't been sure that Alix was seeing the future. He'd thought that Kim might have been right, that Alix might just have seen stuff happening far away from her.

But now he was thinking that she not only might be able see the future, but might also be able to share it.

But if that was true, then...

_No matter what you do, no matter what choices you make, this will one day happen._

If Alix could see the future, then Paris was in for something terrible. And it would be his fault.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by the sudden and surprising decision of Adrien's to smack himself in the head with a textbook.

Adrien smiled slightly, seeming amused by everyone's surprised reactions. He handed the textbook back to Nino. "Open it up. Tell me a page and a paragraph number."

Nino flipped the book open. "Uh... Page 93, paragraph 2?"

Adrien's smile widened slightly.

His smile reminded Ivan of Kim's, and it took him a second to figure out why.

That was the smile of someone who wanted to show off, and had just found an opportunity to do it.

Kim broadcasted his showoff-ness, and this kid was trying to keep his hidden, but it was still there.

"You picked a long one," Adrien said, his voice mild, and polite, and underneath it's mild politeness, Ivan recognized the same cockiness in his voice as in Kim's.

Ivan frowned, tuning out Adrien's next words. If this kid was anything like Kim, Ivan didn't really want to listen to him.

But of course, it was too soon to judge him.

Ivan made himself focus on what was going on in class again.

"What did you do?" Nino was saying. "Memorize the whole book?"

Adrien tilted his head. "Not really memorized. More like... Downloaded. All the information in that textbook is now in my brain. But I didn't just memorize all the words. I know how to apply it, too. If you gave me a book about rocket science, I wouldn't just know all the words in the book. I'd know what they meant. I'd know how to build a rocket ship. I could also do it if you let me touch all the parts of a spaceship. When I touch something, I know what it's made of, what it's for, how it works."

There was a moment of silence. Kim was the one to break it, his voice hard, suspicious. "So what happens if you touch a person?"

Ivan didn't hear Adrien's response. He was too busy looking at Kim's suspicious face.

_The class won't believe him._

_But you have to._

Alix had seen this too. She had known Kim would doubt him.

And for some reason, she had thought the only thing that would prevent the destruction of Paris was Ivan listening to Adrien.

But that didn't make any sense. Adrien being able to memorize or download or whatever a textbook wouldn't help him stop Ivan or Mylene from... From doing whatever it was they did to tear the city apart.

"...Powers?" Kim said, snapping Ivan out of his thoughts. "What do you mean?"

Adrien shrugged. "What powers you have, how they work, how you could control them, how someone else could stop them. Just a quick touch, and I could know everything about your powers."

And suddenly, Ivan's dream made sense.

_Listen to Adrien. Believe Adrien._

Because whatever powers Ivan and Mylene had, they were going to tear Paris apart.

And Adrien could tell him exactly what his powers were, and how to stop them.

Adrien could tell him how to keep Paris safe.

Kim leaned back in his chair. "Really? Prove it."

Adrien smiled, not seeming at all offended by Kim's challenge.

So he wasn't so much like Kim after all.

"Do you know how your powers work?" Adrien asked.

Kim nodded.

Adrien didn't say another word. Just smiled and held out his hand.

Kim stared at him for a second. Then he huffed loudly and stood up, walking down to Adrien.

He hit Adrien's hand in what was probably meant to be an aggressive way, but was really just a high five.

He smiled gloatingly at Adrien. "Was that not long enough? You said even a brief touch..."

Adrien cut him off. "You're an empath."

The whole class' eyes widened, though not as wide as Kim's. He really hadn't believed Adrien.

Adrien kept going. "You can perceive people's emotions with multiple senses. Taste, smell, and sight are easiest. Extremely powerful emotions effect touch and hearing, but once that happens it becomes debilitating. You try to turn your ability off, but it almost never works. My guess is that's because you're doing it wrong."

Kim scowled, recovering from his surprise. "How am I doing it wrong?"

Adrien tilted his head like the question confused him. "Empathic powers are meant to help people, to tell you how they feel. The more you ignore people and fight your powers, the more you need them to know how everyone around is feeling. So you're keeping your powers active by trying to ignore them and the people around you. Spend more time thinking about other people and you won't have to fight it."

Kim glared at him, but didn't say anything.

Adrien looked away from Kim. "Would anyone else like me to...?"

Ivan raised his hand in the air, his heart hammering in his chest. "I would, I guess," he said, trying to sound casual.

Adrien looked taken aback, but he nodded and held up his hand again.

Ivan stood up and moved down, giving Adrien a high five.

The second their hands touched, Adrien yelped loudly and jumped backwards, tripping over Ms. Buster's desk and landing with a painful thump on the other side.

"Ow," Adrien said, his voice oddly emotionless.

"Why did you do that?" Ivan asked.

Adrien got to his feet. "I didn't do anything. You pushed me."

Ivan blinked. "I didn't push you."

"Well, your powers did, then," Adrien said. "The second before you touched me. So I don't know exactly what your powers are, but I'm guessing you've got some kind of forcefield power."

Ivan frowned. "You... You can't tell what my power is? But..."

He made himself stop. He didn't want to tell people about his dream.

But still. Why did he have to listen to Adrien if Adrien couldn't tell him anything?

Kim folded his arms across his chest. "Oh, so you can tell my powers, but the second you try it on someone who doesn't know what their powers are, you can't. That's kind of convenient, don't you think?"

Adrien frowned like he didn't think it was convenient and squinted at Kim. "Why do you think I'm lying?"

"Because you're a liar," Marinette said.

She'd muttered it under her breath like she didn't plan on anyone hearing, but Ivan heard it.

And going by the way Adrien's eyes snapped toward her, he'd heard her too.

But he didn't comment on what she said. He looked back at Kim and waited for an answer.

Kim regarded him with narrowed eyes. "Because a power that would let you know that much about someone with a touch is unheard of."

Adrien tilted his head. "If that's what you think, than you don't know as much about powers as you think you do."

Anger flared in Kim's eyes. He went to say something else, but he got cut off by Ms. Bustier hurriedly telling everyone to get to their seats.

Kim returned reluctantly to his desk. Adrien slid into the seat next to Nino.

Ivan went back to his seat as well, still feeling confused.

Why tell him to listen to Adrien when Adrien couldn't tell him anything?

His mind kept drifting from his dream to his conversation with Adrien, searching for something Adrien had said that he needed to believe, but he kept coming up blank.

The bell rang, startling him. He hadn't realized class was over already.

Ivan stood and packed up his stuff.

He started to walk out the door, but a hand on his arm stopped him.

He turned and saw Adrien, his eyes flicking around at the students leaving, like he was about to say something he didn't want anyone to overhear.

He didn't say anything until the room was empty. Then he looked up at Ivan. "Sorry I lied."

Ivan blinked. "What?"

"I do know what your powers are," Adrien admitted, frowning, looking off to the side like he was lost in thought. "I just didn't want to say it in front of the class."

That was not what Ivan had been expecting to hear. "What?"

Adrien looked back at him. "Who's Mylene?"

Ivan blinked several more times. "What?"

Adrien smiled weakly. "I'm probably confusing you. Sorry. It's just that when I touched your hand, I got the impression that your powers were the opposite of Mylene's. Only, I don't know who that is. I figured it was probably someone in the class."

"Oh. Uh, yeah, Mylene is in the class," Ivan said.

Adrien nodded. "Then I made the right choice. If I'd told the class about your powers, it might have scared her. And if that happened, Paris would probably be destroyed."

Ivan's breath caught in his throat. The image of a burning, crumbling city flashed through his mind. "Mylene is super nice. She'd never destroy the city," he protested.

"Maybe not on purpose," Adrien said. "But your powers and hers are opposites. As long as you're close enough to each other, Paris will be safe. You'll cancel each other out. But if you separate from each other and she gets too scared or you get too mad, her powers will flood the streets with monsters or your powers will rip Paris apart."

Ivan stared at Adrien, unable to form words.

His dream. There had been monsters.

Mylene had done that?

"Mylene summons monsters?" Ivan asked numbly. "But then... What do I do? Unsummon monsters?"

Adrien patted Ivan on the shoulder though he had to reach up to do it. "It'll be okay. Just try to stay close to Mylene as much as possible. Walk her home or something."

Close to Mylene?

Ivan had no idea how he was supposed to do that. He could barely even talk to her!

He freaked out about that for a minute, and then he realized that Adrien was gone, and he'd never told Ivan what his power actually was.

He hurried out, intending to track Adrien down.

But he saw Alix first.

She was talking to Nathaniel and laughing, acting like she didn't have a care in the world.

How could she be so calm after the dream she'd shared with him last night?

Unless, of course, she hadn't.

_I've had over a dozen dreams about this._

A dozen dreams. And Alex hadn't had her powers for a dozen days.

So either she'd had all those dreams in one day, or...

Or the Alex who had shown him the future had also been from the future.

Ivan was so surprised by that thought that it took him a minute to realize something much worse.

He'd already lost sight of Mylene.


End file.
